Vaccine tensions loom in Asia as China and India trade free shots for influence
While western Europe’s “vaccine war” has been a struggle to prevent doses from being exported, in another part of the world, the battle is to give vaccines away.
Last week, a Bahraini prince and his retinue arrived in Nepal to climb Mount Everest. They brought climbing gear, provisions and – in an apparent surprise to regulators in Kathmandu – enough Covid-19 vaccines to inoculate 1,000 people.
Bahrain intended the vaccines as a “friendly gesture” to the residents of a village that had recently renamed some hills in honour of the Gulf state’s royals. It coordinated the trip with Nepal’s embassy in Manama, but health ministry officials in the Himalayan country had other ideas, confiscating the Sinopharm doses at the airport.
“It wasn’t coordinated properly,” a spokesperson for the ministry told the Observer. “In general, unauthorised vaccines aren’t allowed in the country.”
The aborted gift was the most unusual of what has been a spree of vaccine giveaways across south Asia.
Over the past decade, China has ramped up its relationship with Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Bangladesh and other states traditionally considered to be in India’s sphere of influence.
The rivalry between Delhi and Beijing has occasionally taken the form of high-altitude standoffs between their armies, but over past months, it has involved a scramble to send Covid-19 vaccine doses across the wider world.