A staff member checks the packaging quality of COVID-19 inactivated vaccine products at a packaging plant of the Beijing Biological Products Institute Co., Ltd. in Beijing, capital of China, December 25, 2020. Photo: Xinhua
China is ramping up efforts to vaccinate 560 million people, or 40 percent of China's population, by the end of June, and another 330 million people will be vaccinated by the year's end, overing 64 percent of the total population, the Global Times has learned.
Officials from regional CDC branches across the country were summoned on Tuesday via a televised meeting to prepare for the acceleration of mass inoculations with higher targets and faster rates.
The accelerated vaccination is meant to safeguard a series of upcoming important events such as the party's centenary celebrations in July, international conferences and major sport events in the second half of the year, and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, according to a meeting summary viewed by the Global Times.
It is also aimed at catching up with the world's leading countries in vaccination rates as fast as possible to avoid an "immunization gap," the summary said.
Some Chinese provinces and cities including Anhui and Shanghai have set a target to vaccinate 40 to 50 percent of the local population by the end of June, staff of the local Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told the Global Times on Tuesday.
Their targets are part of the national vaccination plan, they said. China has a national population of 1.4 billion.
This comes after China's top medical advisor Zhong Nanshan said Monday that China aims to increase domestic vaccination target to 40 percent by June. By the end of February, 52.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines had been administered, according to Zhong.
Local CDC branches of Shanghai and Anhui Provinces have been asked to accelerate the vaccination. Even though this is a difficult target, there is confidence that the goal will be achieved, an Anhui CDC employee told the Global Times on condition of anonymity on Tuesday.
During a national planning session of the Chinese CDC on Tuesday, authorities clarified the vaccination goals for each province and assigned tasks to each region, the Anhui CDC employee who attended the regional vaccination planning session afterwards on Tuesday told the Global Times.
A Shanghai CDC employee also said the city's vaccination program will be reviewed to meet the new target.
Currently China has a vaccination rate of 3.5 percent.
Experts say this is a challenging goal to achieve under the current shortage of vaccine supplies and tight vaccination facilities.
According to the Anhui CDC employee, only 1.5 million doses have been administered to a population of more than 60 million in the province. The biggest challenge is the lack of vaccination sites and staff, which requires more investment and resource mobilization.
Experts also expressed their concerns about insufficient domestic vaccine production to meet the target, considering that some batches have been offered to other countries. However, it is likely that China will increase vaccine production in the next three months and may import some vaccines from other countries to replenish supplies, Tao Lina, a Shanghai-based vaccine observer, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
Another concern is that people who received earlier doses six months ago might have already lost the immune response to the virus, given that the long-term protective effects of the COVID-19 vaccine is still under study.