Chinese capital offers elderly Covid vaccine-related health insurance to ease hesitancy
- Relatively low vaccine take-ups among the most vulnerable age groups are a key weakness in the country’s ‘dynamic zero-Covid’ strategy
- The new plan for Beijing offers payouts of up to US$74,200 with premiums covered by the government in an effort to overcome vaccine hesitancy
How China’s drive to develop its own state-of-the-art Covid vaccine is going
The city of 22 million people had fully inoculated 97.7 per cent of its adult residents as of September last year, but only 80.6 per cent of people aged 60 and over had received their first dose by mid-April this year, according to city officials.
The new insurance plan, with premiums covered by the government, aims to “alleviate concerns over vaccination among the elderly group and their family members”, state television reported late on Thursday, citing information from the Beijing office of China’s banking and insurance regulator.
The insurance policy payout could be as high as 500,000 yuan (US$74,200) per person for a single benefit, according to the report, which did not provide specific details of the plan.
Elsewhere, several districts in the northern city of Tianjin, also battling a fresh Omicron cluster, have pledged to “strictly limit” entry into venues such as stadiums for unvaccinated senior citizens who do not have medical conditions that render vaccination unsuitable.
