China’s urgency for COVID-19 lost in jab drive

Shirley Sea has received three COVID-19 vaccination offers through her hometown, Beijing’s residential and office areas, but her HR manager is not in a hurry.

“First of all, I want to keep an eye on the negative effects,” said Mr. Zhi, who likes many Chinese people, and seems to be willing to take a wait-and-see approach.

Through aggressive blockades and millions of mass tests, China succeeded in controlling the virus that first surfaced in the soil in late 2019.

But vaccination of the most populous countries in the world is another story.

China is still working to increase the production of four domestically produced vaccines that have been approved, and has not yet approved foreign-made vaccines in the global competition for bragging rights.

For Shi, the problem is not accessibility, but lack of urgency.

“It’s not necessary for now, as China is controlling the epidemic domestically and has no plans to go abroad in the near future,” she said.

Chinese experts suggest that vaccination rates can quickly increase.

Zhong Nanshan, a respected pulmonologist and a major national figure in the fight against COVID-19, recently planned that China would immunize 40% of 1.4 billion people by June. Said that.

To do so, the number of jabs given in China, which currently inoculates only about 3.5% of the population, needs to be significantly increased.

According to Our World in Data, a collaboration between Oxford University and a charity, this is far behind the 32.99 jabs per 100 people in the UK and 25.42 in the US.

“There is no sense of urgency in the west beyond the expected vaccination game changer,” said Matthew Duchatel, director of the Asian program at the Montagne Institute, a Paris-based think tank. Stated.

Health risk

Slow pace can delay and pose a risk to China Herd immunity..

There is no globally accepted standard for the proportion of populations who need to jab or develop the necessary antibodies through infection to initiate herd immunity to COVID-19.

November treatise Medical journal The Lancet estimated the percentage of 100% effective vaccines to be 60-72, but Takafuku, head of the Chinese disease control agency, said in a comment this week that the percentage in China was 70-80%.

China’s infectious disease specialist Zhang Wenhong told a recent forum that China would need to administer 10 million doses daily for seven months to reach these thresholds. According to Zhong Nanshan, as of the end of February, only about 52.5 million doses had been administered.

Zhang added that the current pace is a “big concern.”

In addition to speeding up production, China is also working to ship vaccines abroad, striving to blunt foreign criticism of the virus’s first spread from the coast.

Chinese companies plan to export nearly 400 million doses, state media reports, and said the government is providing free vaccines to 53 countries.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters on Sunday that he has set up a “regional vaccination site” to make Chinese-made jabs available overseas and has begun a drive to shoot bullets at Chinese overseas. Told.

China is sandwiched between “both vaccination requirements to achieve herd immunity and demands associated with vaccine diplomacy,” said Yanzhong Huang, Global Health Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations. I will.

Huang said a delay in herd immunity could mean that China would lag behind the reopening of its borders, while other economies would move forward.

This “may make China look bad,” he said.

Skepticism

In China, the issue of trust in countries with a history of drug safety scandals can delay the acceptance of vaccines by the general public.

Market research firm Ipsos discovered in January that 85% of Chinese adults were willing to be jabed, but it was unclear how soon they would be jabed.

At a Beijing clinic, doctors said the jab was provided to all staff, but many blamed it until more data on the effectiveness of the vaccine became available.

Chinese producers, unlike their foreign rivals, have not yet released detailed data.

Vaccinations in China began last year when major groups such as medical staff and state-owned workers went abroad. This has been extended to other citizens, but most are the largest cities.

With its resources and proven ability to mobilize for large-scale efforts, China could catch up with vaccination rates as supply increases.

Zhang Yutong, an employee of the dental clinic, was in a stable stream of people flowing into a Beijing clinic after the employer arranged a jab.

She told AFP that almost two-thirds of her colleagues were offered.

“The epidemic has become a part of everyday life. It’s better to have antibodies,” she said.

© 2021 AFP