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Shirley Shi has received three offers to be vaccinated against Covid-19 – across her hometown, Beijing residential area and office – but the human resources manager is in no rush.
“I would like to keep an eye out for side effects first,” said Shi, who like many Chinese people seems happy to take a wait-and-see approach.
Thanks to aggressive lockdowns and mass testing of millions of people, China has successfully brought the virus that first surfaced on its soil to the surface at the end of 2019.
But vaccinating the world’s most populous country is another story.
China is still striving to increase production of its four vaccines approved and produced domestically and has yet to approve overseas-made vaccines in a global race for bragging rights.
For Shi, the problem is not accessibility, but a lack of urgency.
“With China’s control of the epidemic domestically and my lack of plans to go overseas in the short term, this is not necessary at this time,” she said.
Chinese experts have signaled that the vaccination rate may accelerate soon.
Zhong Nanshan, a respected pulmonologist and key national figure in the fight against Covid-19, recently said China plans to vaccinate 40% of its 1.4 billion people by June.
This would require massively increasing the number of injections administered in China, where currently only around 3.5% of the population is vaccinated.
That’s far behind the UK’s 32.99 hits per 100 people and the US’s 25.42, according to Our World in Data, a collaboration between the University of Oxford and a charity.
“The sense of urgency that exists in the West, where vaccination is nothing less than an expected game changer, is not present in China,” said Mathieu Duchatel, director of the Asia program at the Institute. Montaigne, a Paris-based think tank.
The slower pace could pose risks for China by delaying collective immunity.
There is no globally accepted standard for the percentage of a population that must be trapped – or to develop the necessary antibodies per infection – for herd immunity to Covid-19 to come into play.
A November article in the medical journal The Lancet estimated this percentage to be 60-72 for a 100% effective vaccine, while Gao Fu, head of China’s disease control agency, estimated it to be 70- 80% for China in comments this week.
China would need to administer 10 million doses per day for seven months to meet these thresholds, Chinese infectious disease specialist Zhang Wenhong said at a recent forum. Only about 52.5 million doses had been administered by the end of February, according to Zhong Nanshan.
The current pace is “very worrying,” Zhang added.
Along with ramping up production, China has also pledged to ship vaccines overseas as it works to blunt foreign criticism of the virus’s initial spread from its shores.
Chinese companies are expected to export nearly 400 million doses, state media reported, and the government said it was providing free vaccines to 53 countries.
The country is also setting up “regional vaccination sites” to make Chinese-made vaccines available overseas and launching a campaign to obtain vaccines against overseas Chinese, said Sunday. Foreign Minister Wang Yi to reporters.
China is caught between “both the requirement of vaccination to obtain collective immunity … and the demand associated with its vaccine diplomacy,” said Yanzhong Huang, a global health researcher at the US Council on Foreign Relations.
Huang said delays in herd immunity could mean China is falling behind in reopening its borders – now largely closed to everyone except Chinese citizens – as other economies move forward.
This “could give China a bad image,” he said.
In China, public adoption of the vaccine can also be slowed by confidence issues in a country with a history of drug safety scandals.
Market research firm Ipsos found in January that 85% of adults in China had said they were ready to be tricked, but it was not clear when they would do so.
At a Beijing clinic, a doctor said injections had been offered to all staff, but many hesitated until more data on the effectiveness of the vaccines became available.
Chinese producers have yet to release detailed data, unlike their foreign rivals.
Vaccinations in China began last year with key groups such as medical staff and government officials traveling abroad. This has been extended to other citizens, although largely in larger cities.
With its resources and demonstrated ability to mobilize for a mass effort, China may well catch up on vaccination rates once supplies increase.
Zhang Yutong, a dental clinic worker, was part of a constant stream of people flocking to a Beijing clinic after her employer organized beatings.
She told AFP that nearly two-thirds of her colleagues also accepted the offer.
“The epidemic is now part of life. Better to have antibodies, ”she said.
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