China not ready to ease strict Covid-19 controls, says senior health official

National Health Commission estimates around 1.1 billion people will have been vaccinated by the end of October
More than 900 million people are fully vaccinated, but senior official admits it is getting harder to convince holdouts to take the shot

Coronavirus China

Zhuang Pinghuiin Beijing

Published: 2:00pm, 4 Sep 2021

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China’s zero-tolerance Covid-19 strategy will not change until the authorities are confident that its vaccination campaign has been effective enough to ease restrictions, a senior health official said on Friday.

Zheng Zhongwei, head of medical science development at the National Health Commission, said those strict measures – including quarantine, rigorous testing and large-scale contact tracing – would not be changed easily.

“We will not relax controls until we have reached a certain level of vaccine coverage. We will not relax controls unless we make a judgment about the virus and how vaccination can guarantee the effectiveness of adjusting epidemic control measures,” Zheng told a health forum on the sidelines of the China International Fair for Trade in Services in Beijing.

The country’s zero-tolerance policy has been called into question after the highly transmissible Delta variant caused a cluster of cases that infected more than 1,300 people in at least 15 provinces.

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But Zheng said China’s “firm resolution” had contained more than 30 outbreaks since the disease first emerged at the end of 2019, adding that three factors – strict public health controls, a high vaccination rate and therapeutic treatment – would be needed to “end the epidemic”.

“We … will not make adjustments if one aspect has not reached its target,” Zheng said.

More than 2 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines had been administered in China by Thursday, but Zheng said about 900 million people were fully vaccinated, more than 60 per cent of the whole population. China would need at least 1.1 billion people fully vaccinated to reach herd immunity, experts have said.

But Zheng said it was getting harder to mobilise people to get vaccinated, especially those who have never previously been inoculated.

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“Chinese people generally follow policies well due to cultural and social reasons, but recently we have felt it is getting harder as the vaccination campaign goes on, especially among those who have never taken jabs before,” he said.

According to a slide Zheng presented at the forum, around 1.1 billion Chinese people will be vaccinated by the end of October and key groups – the over-60s, those at high risk of infections and people who need to travel to countries with high infection rates – will have received a booster shot by then.

Last week the Chinese authorities announced that high-risk and vulnerable groups would be given booster shots and further be needed to decide whether to give them to the general public.

While some countries that had used Chinese-made vaccines have now decided to offer vaccines developed in other countries using different technologies as a booster, China will not be mixing its doses in that way.

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“Right now we are recommending a booster shot of the same technology, but we are studying [the effect of] mixing different technologies at home and abroad,” Zheng said on Friday. “We will provide more options when we have the study results.”

Zheng said China would make more than 5 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines this year and would honour last month’s promise by President Xi Jinping that 2 billion doses would be provided to other countries this year.

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Deng Boqing, deputy director of the China International Development Cooperation Agency, said on Friday that China had provided 990 million doses to 105 countries and four international organisations so far this year.

Deng made the comments at a ceremony in Beijing to send 1 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines and supplies to Myanmar, where the number of Covid-19 infections has risen to more than 400,000.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Mainland not ready to loosen strict pandemic measures