Covid-19: Beijing’s vaccine mandate stirs worries among residents with foreign jabs

New rules could make gyms, cinemas, museums and even offices off-limits
The capital’s health app can’t log records of those who received Moderna or BioNTech shots

Coronavirus China

Zhuang Pinghuiin BeijingandWendy Wuin Beijing

Published: 6:00am, 8 Jul 2022

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Beijing residents who received foreign Covid-19 vaccines are anxiously awaiting guidance on whether jabs administered overseas will be recognised under a new rule requiring proof of vaccination to enter public places.

Some said they would have to get Chinese vaccines if their status could not be recognised to avoid being barred from entry under the mandate, which takes effect on Monday.

“A lot of my friends sent me the news last night and some of them, like me, had foreign Covid-19 vaccines before they returned from overseas studies. I am completely at a loss now and don’t know what to do,” said Alice Ma, who had two doses of the Moderna vaccine in New York before returning to Beijing last year.

The Beijing municipal government announced the country’s first vaccine mandate on Wednesday amid a fresh outbreak caused by the more transmissible BA.5 Omicron variant. Live performance venues, cinemas, museums, gyms, training and tutoring locations are among those that will be off-limits to the unvaccinated.

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Although the announcement did not mention office buildings, several in the capital’s Chaoyang and Haidian districts have told their tenants to abide by the new rule.

In an interview with Beijing Daily on Thursday night, an unidentified official in charge of the city’s Covid-19 prevention and control work did not say specifically that the mandate would be halted, but hinted that by saying the city would follow the “voluntary” principle of vaccination, and that residents could enter all public places with 72 hours of a negative coronavirus test.

The European Union Chamber of Commerce in China said it was disappointed in the apparent reversal of the policy just one day after the announcement of the mandate.

It said the mandate could have been an effective way to push for vaccination and the reversal suggested the plan had not been well conceived or communicated.

The chamber said a lack of consultation resulted in strong pushback from the public, and in the future the government should communicate the benefits and potential downsides of vaccination in the interests of transparency.

“The chamber is now very concerned that this sudden policy U-turn will discourage other cities in China from pursuing an effective vaccination campaign that will protect the population from a virus that is simply not going away,” chamber president Joerg Wuttke said. “It has also undermined the possibility of an exit from zero Covid, at least in the short term, and China’s economy will continue to suffer as a result.”

Beijing’s health code app, which logs vaccination status, testing records and other data, was updated last week to make it easier to display the information when checking in at restricted venues. However, vaccinations given outside Beijing – even in other parts of mainland China – do not appear on the app.

Li Ang, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Health Commission, said those who were vaccinated outside the capital could visit a vaccination site in person to manually register their vaccination record. But in practice, this does not work for people who were jabbed with foreign vaccines abroad.

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“If you are vaccinated with the Sinovac or Sinopharm vaccine overseas, just come to the clinic and we will register your record in the system. But if you are vaccinated with Pfizer or Moderna, we can’t do anything for now because we don’t have the option of those vaccines in the system,” said a nurse in a vaccination clinic in Beijing’s Chaoyang district. Another clinic in the downtown Dongcheng district gave a similar answer.

“We had several people come and ask in the morning about their record for receiving Pfizer, but we couldn’t help them,” she added.

Mainland China has yet to approve any foreign vaccines. Shanghai-based distributor Shanghai Fosun Pharma has been planning to bring the German-manufactured BioNTech jab to mainland China, but the vaccine has been stuck in the approval process for over a year.

It remained unclear whether records of Fosun-distributed BioNTech jabs received in Hong Kong could be uploaded to the Beijing health code app.

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The announcement on Wednesday also did not specify whether a single dose would be sufficient to enter restricted venues or if people must be fully vaccinated. The municipal health commission did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

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For some who have already received foreign jabs, a more practical option would be to get additional Chinese vaccines to comply with the mandate.

“I probably will take another shot of Sinopharm or Sinovac just to have the convenience of going to the gym or to a bar, if required,” said Stephen, a French citizen in Beijing who preferred not to give his surname. “My last shot was four months ago when I came to China. I guess there won’t be a big risk if I take another shot now.”

Mark Zimmermann from Germany said he received his last shot almost a year ago in his home country, so he would not mind getting an extra jab “to get the freedom to move”.

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“In the West, the Chinese inactivated vaccines might not be accepted that well, but I don’t mind taking one shot since almost 1.4 billion people in China have done it,” he said.

But Ma said she would prefer to have her Moderna vaccination recognised and logged in the health code app. If that does not work, she will consider taking the Chinese shots, but she still has concerns.

“Even if I start taking domestic vaccines, it will take a while to complete inoculation. It will be very troublesome if I can’t enter so many places between the shots,” Ma said.