An illustration shows vials of a COVID-19 vaccine and syringes with the logos of US pharmaceutical company Pfizer and German partner BioNTech. (Photo: AFP)

China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson on Wednesday denounced some Western media for making COVID-19 vaccines an invisible geopolitical issue and attempting to promote Pfizer's vaccine while criticizing Chinese vaccines.

Some American and British media, including some mainstream media outlets, have taken the lead in making vaccines an invisible geopolitical issue, projecting their political stance into the relevant reports, which is highly abnormal. They want to promote the Pfizer vaccine and criticize the Chinese vaccine, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said in remarks at Wednesday's media briefing.

China has absolutely no such narrow geopolitical bias, and our idea is that China is willing to contribute to making vaccines accessible and affordable, Hua said.

Chinese media reported on the deaths of 23 elderly people in Norway after receiving the Pfizer vaccine, but surprisingly, mainstream English-language media did not report the incident immediately, and major US and UK media were obviously downplaying their deaths.

In response to whether Chinese media reports were exaggerated and misleading, and whether it would result in people's trust in vaccines being reduced, Hua said it was related to a fundamental issue of why the things that Western media reported widely cannot be reported by Chinese media.

If we were just reporting an objective phenomenon or fact, we would be denounced for spreading disinformation or doing it for diplomatic purposes, and this view reflected a deep-rooted ideological bias against China and a very unfair treatment of China, Hua said.

Chinese media reported the public statement made by the Norwegian Medicines Agency, but mainstream English-language media did not immediately report it.

However, once there were negative rumors about Chinese vaccines, Western media scrambled to report it, Hua said.

Regarding the deaths in Norway, the Norwegian Medicines Agency said in an updated statement that all deaths that occur within the first few days of vaccination are carefully assessed. It added that it could not rule out that adverse reactions to the vaccine occurring within the first few days following vaccination (such as fever and nausea) may contribute to more serious consequences and fatal outcomes in patients with severe underlying diseases.