Russia has sold Mongolia one million doses of its Sputnik V vaccine. China has provided four million doses of vaccine the final shipment of doses arrived this week. Mongolias most recent agreement with Chinas Sinopharm Group, which is state-owned, was made days before the company received emergency authorization from the World Health Organization.
Mongolia was late to the global clamber for Covid-19 vaccines. For nearly a year officials boasted that there were no local cases. Then came an outbreak in November. Two months later, political crisis precipitated by the mishandling of the virus led to the sudden resignation of the prime minister. The prospect of continued coronavirus restrictions threatened to throw the country into further political turmoil.
The new prime minister, Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai, pledged to restart the economy, which had suffered from lockdowns and border closures, particularly in the south, where Mongolian truck drivers ferry coal across the border to Chinas steel mills. But these plans were complicated by surging cases, with the daily count going from hundreds a day to thousands.
We were quite desperate, said Bolormaa Enkhbat, an economic and development policy adviser to Mr. Luvsannamsrai.
