China’s low vaccination rate risks delaying return to normal, warns leading medical expert Zhong Nanshan
- The country’s top infectious diseases specialist tells online event that the country risks falling behind
- The country has set a target of inoculating 560 million people by the end of June, but so far only 65 million have been given a shot
China risks falling behind other nations in getting back to normal unless it increases its vaccination rates, the country’s leading expert in respiratory diseases has warned.
Zhong Nanshan told an online seminar on Saturday that the number willing to get the jabs was low because they felt the country had got Covid-19 under control.
The country’s vaccination rate is about four per 100 people, compared with 35 in the United States or 42 in Britain. Israel has the world’s highest rate at 111 per 100, meaning its population has already received the first jab and is onto the second, according to Our World in Data.
“If China continues with such a low vaccination rate, it will not keep up. There’s a possibility that in the future, other countries will have [herd immunity] but China doesn’t,” Zhong told the event organised by medical equipment company Biz Pairing.
China’s Centre for Disease Control has set a goal of inoculating 40 per cent of the population, about 560 million people, by June. But as of last Monday, just 65 million people have been given an injection.
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Zhong, who played a leading role in the country’s battle against severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003, also rejected criticisms that China’s aggressive containment strategy, such as locking down cities and carrying out mass testing, was “autocratic”.
“Because of this strong containment, some countries think that this was really ‘autocratic’ or ‘authoritarian’, and had human rights [concerns]. But actually, you can see the results of this method,” he said.
Zhong said China’s confirmed number of coronavirus patients was probably the world’s lowest at 72.46 per million, compared with the global average of 14,452 per million. China’s mortality rate was also low, at 3.45 per million, while the global average was 320 per million, according to charts that Zhong presented.
American scientists found that the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines both saw a 20 to 40 fold decrease in neutralisation of the South African strain, according to a paper published in the journal Cell this month.
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However, Zhong said there are solutions being developed and it was easy to redesign mRNA vaccines.
“Once [an mRNA vaccine] is developed, it will target the new mutations and this work is under way. The whole virus [vaccine] also saw its efficacy reduced against mutated strains but it was still effective,” Zhong said.
