BEIJING (Reuters) – China has accelerated vaccinations against COVID-19, giving 10 million doses in about a week, and is considering various visa policies based on vaccination and viral conditions in different countries, officials said on Sunday.
The country has administered 74.96 million doses of vaccine since Saturday, health commission spokesman Mi Feng said in a briefing. It has risen from 64.98 million since March 14.
China aims to vaccinate 40 percent of 1.4 billion people by mid-year, according to state media and a top health adviser. China was among the first countries to start administering vaccines last year and exported millions of doses, but its vaccination rate has fallen following those in countries such as Israel and the United States.
More than 70 million doses of Sinovac Biotech shot were administered globally, a company spokesman told a news conference, without specifying how many of them were administered in China.
Beijing is considering different policies for issuing visas, flights and checks on the number of people arriving in China based on the progress of vaccination and COVID-19 situations in different countries.
“We do not exempt vaccinated people from testing and isolation measures for the time being,” said Feng Zijian, deputy director of the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC).
However, he said China would pay attention to international progress in developing “vaccine passports” and could adjust measures to reduce the virus once the domestic population reaches a high level of immunization.
Chinese year-round vaccine production can fully meet the needs of the entire country, said Mao Junfeng, an official with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
He said the supply of vaccine materials, including glass vials and syringes, was “relatively stable”.
Countries with high proportions of the elderly should be given priority for vaccination, said Wu Zunyou, China CDC’s chief epidemiologist.
If all countries continue with their vaccination programs at the same rate, each country may achieve only 10% or 30% immunity, insufficient to protect the population, Wu explained at the China Development Forum in Beijing on Saturday night.
“We need to get to 70% -80% in a country as soon as possible, then in a second country, then in a third country,” Wu said.
China has approved four locally developed vaccines for general public use from Sinovac, CanSino Biologics and two units of China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm).
A fifth vaccine developed by the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was approved for emergency use last week.
Reporting by Roxanne Liu and Ryan Woo; Edited by William Mallard and Sam Holmes