Covid-19: start of vaccination in Kyrgyzstan with the support of Beijing - France 24

Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan) (AFP)

Kyrgyzstan launched its Covid-19 immunization campaign on Monday using vaccines offered by neighboring China, which is accused by the West of using vaccination as a tool of geopolitical influence.

A poor and mountainous country in Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan was offered 150,000 doses of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine free of charge in early March.

This will deliver two doses to 75,000 people, or just over 1% of the Kyrgyz population of 6.5 million.

China, as well as Russia, are in political and economic competition in this ex-Soviet republic.

And they dominate the race for vaccines for the time being.

Kyrgyz Health Minister Alymkadyr Beishenaliev said his country expected up to half a million doses of the Russian Sputnik-V vaccine by May or June.

Receiving his first dose of the Sinopharm vaccine on Monday, in front of the cameras, the minister said that caregivers would be given priority for vaccination, then teachers, border guards and people at risk and over 65 years old.

Mr. Beichenalïev also confirmed that Kyrgyzstan had suspended the reception of the AstraZeneca vaccine via the Covax program, reserved for the poorest countries.

He indicated that the Kyrgyz authorities were awaiting the results of the ongoing checks on the use of this vaccine - subject to suspicion after serious cases of blood clots - before using it.

The vaccination campaign in Kyrgyzstan comes as tension mounts in the West over the delivery of Russian and Chinese vaccines.

French President Emmanuel Macron spoke on Thursday, at the end of a virtual European summit, of "a world war of a new kind", and the "attacks" and "inclinations of destabilization - Russian, Chinese - of influence by the vaccine".

In Central Asia, Uzbekistan, a country of 34 million inhabitants, on Saturday received one million doses of the vaccine produced by the Chinese pharmaceutical company Anhui Zhifei Longcom Biopharmaceutical.

The vaccination campaign is due to start there this week.

Kazakhstan, for its part, began vaccinating last month with Sputnik-V.

© 2021 AFP