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Top Asian News 4:45 a.m. GMT

China prepares large-scale rollout of COVID-19 vaccines

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Provincial governments across China are placing orders for experimental, domestically made coronavirus vaccines, though health officials have yet to say how well they work or how they may reach the country's 1.4 billion people. Developers are speeding up final testing, the Chinese foreign minister said Thursday during a U.N. meeting, as Britain issued approval for emergency use of Pfizer Inc.'s vaccine candidate and providers scrambled to set up distribution. China's fledgling pharmaceutical industry has at least five vaccines from four producers being tested in more than a dozen countries including Russia, Egypt and Mexico. Health experts say even if they are successful, the certification process for the United States, Europe, Japan and other developed countries might be too complex for them to be used there.