More than 889mn fully vaccinated in China: Health body

BEIJING: China has fully vaccinated 889.4 million people against Covid-19 as of Thursday, the national health commission (NHC) has said, adding that more than 2 billion doses of Covid shots have been administered. China had breached the billion vaccine mark on June 19. Since then, it has administered another billion shots in the last 10 weeks.

More than 889.4 million people have been fully vaccinated in China, the NHC spokesperson, Mi Feng said. Continuous efforts will be made to advance the mass vaccination campaign, Mi said on Friday, warning against any slackness among the public in personal protection.

Speaking at a health conference recently, China’s top respiratory expert Zhong Nanshan had said that the country is aiming to fully vaccinate 80% of its 1.4bn population by the end of 2021. China’s push to boost vaccination rates accelerated since July when the highly contagious Delta variant triggered the worst country-wide outbreak since last year. The outbreak is now under control but authorities have kept up the pace of the country’s vaccine campaign.

The respiratory expert Zhong said achieving herd immunity depends on vaccine efficacy and virus transmissibility. “The efficacy of China-developed vaccines is about 70%, so the country would need more than 80% of the population to be vaccinated before establishing herd immunity,” Zhong was quoted as saying by Chinese state media.

Zhong added China is expected to reach that goal by year end. According to experts, herd immunity occurs when a large section of a population becomes immune to a spreading disease, preventing transmission within communities.