China: 1 billion vaccine doses have been administered

China announced on Sunday that over 1 billion coronavirus vaccines doses have been administered within its borders.

As The Associated Press reports, the pace of vaccinations in China has sped up recently after initially getting off to a slow start. The country’s National Health Commission did not specify how many people have been vaccinated, however most vaccines approved for use in China are administered in two doses, as is the case with most other COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S.

Currently, there are seven Chinese-made vaccines approved for use in the country of over 1.4 billion people, with two recently approved for use in children as young as 3 years old. Although no vaccines made outside of China have been approved yet, the AP notes that there have been indications that the government in Beijing is close to approving the COVID-19 vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech.

It was reported last week that China has also been supplying millions of coronavirus vaccine doses to various countries throughout Southeast Asia such as Cambodia, the Philippines and Thailand.

China is reportedly using these vaccine donations as an opportunity to strengthen ties with the nearby countries and attack Western countries that it accused of hoarding vaccines for themselves.