China invested a considerable sum in its COVID-19 vaccination campaign during 2021 and 2022, with spending reaching 150 billion yuan, equivalent to about $21.5 billion. Reportage from major outlets, including the South China Morning Post, cites data provided by the National Health Security Administration (NHSA) to detail these expenditures and the broader context of the nation’s public health response.
According to the NHSA, the most widely used inactivated vaccines in China—Sinovac, CanSino, and Zifivax—were priced at an average of 16 yuan per dose when evaluated in aggregate. In parallel health economic assessments, the same period saw a weighted average price for a single dose of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in the United States estimated at roughly $20.69. These figures illustrate stark price differences across vaccine platforms and markets and feed into ongoing discussions about access, affordability, and reimbursement for mass vaccination programs in different healthcare systems.
Beyond vaccine purchases, the state health insurance fund allocated about 4.3 billion yuan to nucleic acid testing. Yet this figure accounts for only a portion of testing costs because local governments began funding tests in May 2022, a shift that reflects regional financial strategies and the burden of sustained testing on local budgets. Guangdong, China’s economically strongest province, reported 2022 expenditures of 71.13 billion yuan dedicated to coronavirus containment—an amount that surpasses 5 percent of the province’s total annual spending and underscores the scale of the public health effort undertaken there. This spending pattern illustrates how provincial and national priorities intersect in pandemic responses and how cost-sharing arrangements influence overall health financing during health emergencies.
On the international front, a bill approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on March 10 aimed to increase transparency regarding the origins of COVID-19. The legislation directs the Director of National Intelligence to declassify information related to the outbreak’s origins. The accompanying document acknowledges that the possibility of an origin linked to a laboratory in Wuhan, China, has been a recurring subject of discussion among researchers and policymakers. While the measure would trigger a formal declassification process, the administration at that time did not sign the bill into law, highlighting the political and bureaucratic hurdles that often accompany such sensitive disclosures and the broader debates surrounding the early events of the pandemic and their ongoing geopolitical implications. The situation illustrates how domestic legislative actions in one country can intersect with international health investigations and the delicate balance between public accountability and national security considerations.