A face mask production workshop in Dongguan, South China's Guangdong Province on March 25, 2020 Photo: VCG

China has been playing an indispensable role across the globe in battling the COVID-19 pandemic by providing medical supplies and vaccines to the international community, with the country supplying the most vaccines to the world, a senior official of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Monday. 

China had provided about 372 billion face masks, more than 4.2 billion pieces of protective clothing, and 8.4 billion test reagents to the international community as of the end of 2021, Ning Jizhe, director of the NBS, said during a press briefing in Beijing.

In addition, China has supplied more than 2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines to more than 120 countries and international organizations, becoming the country that has supplied the most vaccines to the world as of the end of last year, Ning noted. 

As the Omicron variant is still spreading across the world, Chinese manufacturers have been ramping up the recruitment of workers and increasing production capacity to make essential supplies such as testing kits and masks for surging orders coming from many places around the world. 

A test kit producer based in East China's Zhejiang Province said that the company has been recruiting more temporary workers in order to fill the booming international orders. 

Chinese face mask manufacturers have also been in full swing with their production. A business manager from a face mask manufacturer in South China's Guangdong Province told the Global Times that the company has experienced a surge in orders from the US, with the number of inquiries from the US increasing by 30 percent over the past weeks. The company also ships products to European countries such as France and Germany. 

China has not only been stepping up efforts in producing medical supplies to support the global battle against the virus since the beginning of the pandemic, but has also been actively transporting epidemic prevention materials to the rest of the world. 



 
China-Europe freight trains operated 15,000 trains in 2021, up 22 percent year-on-year, while carrying 1.46 million standard containers, an increase of 29 percent year-on-year, according to media reports. 

The trains transported 13.43 million pieces of epidemic prevention materials, totaling 103,000 tons, from January to November in 2021, the Xinhua News Agency reported. 

As another major contribution to the world's pandemic prevention, Chinese vaccine producers have also been ramping up their efforts since the new variant was reported.

In 2021, China accelerated the development of vaccines and medicines to deal with new variants, and it is fast-tracking the development of vaccines targeting Omicron, according to CCTV.

Meanwhile, "China has taken the lead in containing local transmission of the virus by working on preventing external risks and internal resurgences to ensure the safety and health of 1.4 billion people, which itself is a major contribution to the world's fight against the pandemic," said Ning. 

Global Times