Coronavirus: China piles on pressure to get vaccinated as country targets 10 million injections a day
- The goal of getting 40 per cent of the population inoculated by June will require a major increase in the number of doses administered
- Some public servants have been warned they will face disciplinary action if they refuse to receive the injections
The National Health Commission announced it had administered more than 91.3 million doses and its figures suggest the daily average has risen from 1.6 million last Saturday to 2.6 million.
The daily total must rise to around 10 million doses if the June target is to be met, and local governments were told during a teleconference with Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan on Monday to accelerate their vaccination rates and regard it as a “major political task”.
Public servants, university students, teachers and doctors in various provinces have all said they are now being put under pressure to get vaccinated.
A typical case is that of Xiao Jing, a civil servant from Jiaxing in Zhejiang province, who this week was told she must get vaccinated unless she could provide a doctor’s letter explaining why she should be exempt.
Xiao said her colleagues had been given a similar instruction, including one man who was reluctant to get the injection because he had heart surgery a few years ago. They were warned they would be publicly reprimanded by the Communist Party’s disciplinary agency if they refused, she said.