AMN/ WEB DESK
Even as China is pushing for a vaccine passport, it is struggling to ramp up its vaccination as it lags behind many western countries. According to state media reports, regional CDC officials from across the country have been ordered to accelerate the mass inoculations with higher targets and faster rates.
The country started emergency vaccinations for certain groups in June last year but still faces pressure to vaccinate its 1.4 billion population fast enough to plug an immunity gap.
The accelerated vaccine campaign is aimed at catching up with the countries leading in vaccination rates as fast as possible to avoid an ‘immunisation gap’. This ‘immunisation gap’ is something which China needs to fill for the success of the ‘vaccine passport’ scheme. Recently, China’s top respiratory disease expert Zhong Nanshan said China had only vaccinated 3.56 per cent of its population of 1.4 billion by February. He said the government now wanted to speed up the programme to meet the July target of 40 per cent – or more than 500 million people.
Meeting this target would require a massive increase in daily vaccinations and public willingness to take the jabs, but experts say it is unlikely to curb China’s ambitions as a global supplier of doses, now a cornerstone of its pandemic foreign policy response. Now, the focus may be shifting as China appears set to ramp up vaccinations at home. China is caught up between the promises it made to countries to supply COVID-19 vaccines commercially or as aid and to vaccinate the world’s largest population. Meanwhile, Chinese vaccine makers have announced plans to boost production in the current year. China has at present approved four vaccines for public use.
Once done, China may have enough vaccine doses to meet a target of immunising 40 per cent of the population against Covid-19 by July, but overcoming public hesitancy was a challenge. They said that with the pandemic largely under control in China it has lagged behind in its vaccine roll-out because people saw less need to get the jab. Reports quoting experts suggest that more efforts were needed to convince the public. Vaccine hesitancy was an obstacle and it would require broader efforts to overcome. Experts say, Vaccine hesitancy will require a tailored response in each country. Policymakers and public-health experts must devise effective strategies to reassure people that vaccination is safe – and the only road out of the pandemic and toward recovery.
Chinese Foreign Ministry while responding to a question before the beginning of the ‘Two Sessions’ said, they don’t have information about the vaccination status of Chinese leaders. Moreover, the related question itself was d from the official transcript on foreign ministry website. This is a contrasting picture when many world leaders have publicly taken jabs of the vaccines approved in their respective countries. After a few days, state media reported that all the delegates attending the “Two Sessions” in Beijing have been vaccinated.
China has also pledged 10 million doses to the COVAX facility, which aims to distribute at least 2 billion doses this year. Till now, China has not contributed to this mechanism because Chinese vaccines must pass WHO vetting on safety and effectiveness. Decisions on two vaccines, from Sinovac and Sinopharm, could be made this month, according to the WHO. Approvals by the WHO would bolster the global credibility of the Chinese vaccines, which have faced some scepticism due to lack of shared data on the results of phase 3 trials as compared to Western vaccine makers.
According to reports, 68 countries have reported they are using BioNTech/Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine, more than for any other shot. Oxford/AstraZeneca’s viral vector vaccine is being used in 55 countries. Sinopharm vaccines developed by the firm’s Beijing and Wuhan affiliates are being used in 15 and two countries, respectively, according to the countries’ officials. Sinovac’s Coronavax is in use in 11 countries.