Hello there, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC.

Today, vaccine diplomacy. It's an East-West arms race over who sticks the most vaccine into the most arms.

G7 countries are realizing that Russia and China are doing active coronavirus vaccine diplomacy

and that G7 countries need to do the same

if they do not want to see their influence continue to diminish in emerging countries.

Well, all rich countries say they are going to help out the poor world to beat the virus,

but is China ahead of the game?

The COVID crisis is really an absolute inflection point in the world. Europe and America

have been extremely embarrassed by this crisis. So this will create a significant opportunity for

China to shift opinions. Vaccines and soft power. That's Business Daily from the BBC.

The speed of the rollout of the various COVID-19 vaccines has been a central story, hasn't it,

in the fight against the virus this year. And from the World Health Organisation downwards,

there has been concern that supplies of the leading Western vaccines, those made by

firms like AstraZeneca and Pfizer, are being hoarded by Western nations. The rich are looking

after themselves. It's claimed poor countries are being excluded from the one proven escape route

from the pandemic. There's a lot of resentment across emerging countries

against Western countries. There are seen to be greedy or keeping coronavirus vaccines for

themselves. The richest countries can expect to have vaccinated a large share of their population

by N-2020, which is going to be fast. But for emerging countries, the timeline stretch into

2023, 2024 if vaccination happens at all. That's Ag for emerging countries, the timeline stretch into 2023, 2024 if vaccination happens

at all. That's Agat Demire, the Economist Intelligence Unit, who says that the failure of

Western nations to support the poor world is being exploited by other emerging powers, notably

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