China Aims to Vaccinate 80% of Population by Mid-2022

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• China is aiming to vaccinate 70-80% of its population by the middle of next year, according to the country’s Center for Disease Control and prevention.

• With four approved vaccines, China will vaccinate 900 million to 1 billion people, said Gao Fu, the CDC head. “We hope that China can take the lead in achieving herd immunity in the world,” he added.

• Herd immunity occurs when enough of the population has immunity, either from vaccination or past infection, to stop the uncontrolled spread of an infectious disease like COVID-19.

 Slower in its vaccination campaign than many other countries 

The vaccination rate in China is 3.8 per 100 people, according to Statista, which gathered data from government websites and press conferences, among other sources. The PRC’s vaccination rate is lower than many Western countries but higher than most countries in Asia’s southern and eastern regions. 

It has been slower in its vaccination campaign than many other countries, including the U.S., government health experts have acknowledged. China has committed roughly 10 times more doses abroad than it has distributed at home. Although emergency vaccinations have been underway in China since at least last summer, the country has been slow to announce whether it had any plans to achieve herd immunity.

China currently has 17 COVID-19 vaccine candidates for clinical trials. It has approved four domestically made vaccines: two from state-owned Sinopharm, one from Sinovac, and another from CanSino. None of the four vaccines have publicly released their final stage trial data.

 Aiming to Vaccinate 70-80% of population by mid-2022 

“We hope that China’s vaccination rate could reach 70 to 80%, meaning 900 million to one billion people,” said Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, as cited by CGTN. Gao noted that China should achieve its vaccination goal by the end of this year but could extend till the middle of next year, based on current vaccine output.

China had administered 52.5 million vaccine doses through the end of February. Leading Chinese Respiratory Disease Expert Zhong Nanshan said the country plans to reach a 40% vaccination rate by the end of June at an online forum in early March. According to CGTN, Chinese vaccine makers Sinopharm and Sinovac aim to expand production capacity this year to more than three billion doses combined.

So far, the PRC has donated or exported COVID-19 vaccines to over 60 countries, primarily developing countries. China is currently only using domestic-made vaccines, mainly the two vaccines produced by Sinopharm and Sinovac – the first two approved by Chinese regulators. No foreign vaccines have been approved in China as of March 10, according to Quartz.

Source: The Washington Post, That's Beijing.

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