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Coronavirus pandemic
ChinaPolitics

Coronavirus: China’s cash-and-stick approach to vaccinating the elderly

  • Some government workers have been given quotas of seniors to get inoculated
  • The country has identified the elderly as a weak link in its coronavirus defences

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China reported more than 38,000 local symptomatic cases in March, more than four times the number of infections in the whole of 2021. Photo: Bloomberg
Reuters
In China’s southern Guangdong province, a teacher was told by her school that she must somehow find four unvaccinated individuals aged 60 or older and get them to take Covid-19 shots to help boost the district’s elderly inoculation rate.

Otherwise, her performance review would be affected.

“But [I] have classes to teach ... I can’t just leave my students and go looking for a needle in a haystack,” said the teacher, who goes by the name Sherry.

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Because some other individuals in her district had been given similar tasks by their employers, Sherry said she had to offer cash incentives from her own pocket to beat the competition to win over the elderly. She said she had spent nearly 1,000 yuan (US$158) in total on two people she managed to get vaccinated.

In the past month, the Omicron variant has dragged the world’s most populous nation into its biggest Covid-19 outbreak since it contained the 2020 Wuhan epidemic, even though the numbers are modest by international standards.

02:51

Shanghai imposes phased lockdowns as daily Covid infection numbers surge beyond 3,000

Shanghai imposes phased lockdowns as daily Covid infection numbers surge beyond 3,000

There were more than 38,000 local symptomatic cases in March, more than four times the number of infections in the whole of 2021. That number did not include those without symptoms, which China classifies separately.

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