TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) – China’s success in controlling the coronavirus outbreak has led to a population that seems almost reluctant to get vaccinated. So, it is accelerating its inoculation campaign by offering incentives – free eggs, store coupons and discounts on food and merchandise – to those who get hit.
After a slow start, China now offers millions of photos a day. On March 26 alone, he took 6.1 million photos. A top government doctor, Zhong Nanshan, announced in June a target for vaccinating 560 million of the country’s 1.4 billion people.
The challenge lies in part in the scale of the effort and the need to convince a population that is currently feeling safe from infections.
When patients first appeared in Wuhan hospitals in late 2019, with fever, cough and shortness of breath, the government closed the city and others in Hubei Province for more than two months from January 2020. Wuhan later became known. under the name of the outbreak epicenter.
Since then, China has controlled the virus through strict border controls and rapid blockades every time new outbreaks occur. People can eat in restaurants, and the risk of infection is low, so many do not seem to rush to receive the vaccine.
“I think everyone has a sense of security and comfort and is in no hurry to get vaccinated unless asked to do so,” said Helen Chen, a health specialist at a market research firm in Shanghai.
But China also wants to open up, as the world tries to return to pre-pandemic normalcy, and Beijing is preparing to welcome tens of thousands of visitors to host the February 2022 Winter Olympics. and a robust smartphone contact tracking system, the government also weighs these measures in balance with a possible return to normalcy.
For now, in big cities like Shanghai and Beijing, the government has relied mainly on sustained and free messages to persuade people to get vaccinated.
Shopping malls offered points at stores or coupons. A temple in Beijing offered free admission to all who prove vaccination. Shanghai uses buses in its campaign to set up mobile vaccination points.
And then there are the free eggs.
“Good news. Starting today, residents over the age of 60 who received the first blow are eligible for five ‘jin’ (2.5 kilograms or 5 1/2 kilograms) of eggs. First come, first served.” , said a poster of a health center run by a city in Beijing.
Wang Feng was too young for the eggs at the clinic, but the 25-year-old cook said he received the vaccine anyway because he could not go to work without it.
“I thought if it worked, then it might as well,” he added.
Some people have expressed doubts about how good the existing vaccines are, Chinese or not, given how quickly they were developed.
“I don’t think such an effective vaccine can be made so quickly,” said Amy Lu, who works at a university in Shanghai.
The five vaccines currently used in China have a range of efficacy between 50.7% and 79.3%, based on what companies say. This does not mean that they have no value – most experts say that anything over 50% is useful to control the pandemic, along with preventing hospitalizations and deaths.
“Even if everyone gets two doses, you may not be able to get the immunity of the herd.” said Wang Chenguang, a former professor at the Union College of Medicine in Beijing and an expert in immunology. Herd immunity occurs when enough people have immunity, either from vaccinations or from previous infections, to stop the uncontrolled spread of an infectious disease.
China may need to vaccinate at least 1 billion people to achieve this, Wang Huaqing, a top immunology official at China’s Disease Control Center, said in a press interview this week. By early April, about 34 million people had received two shots and about 65 million had received a single dose.
Gao Fu, the head of the CDC, said last weekend that China is considering various strategies such as mixing different vaccines to try to increase the effectiveness. External experts say China could eventually roll out other more effective vaccines, such as Pfizer or Moderna photos.
“The best thing to do is to allow the use of other better vaccines and make them available to the Chinese people, but this is probably very difficult politically,” said Jin Dong-yan, a vaccine expert at the University. from Hong Kong Medical School.
Chinese drug manufacturer Fosun Pharmaceutical Group has partnered with German company BioNTech to sell the Pfizer vaccine in China. However, it has only been approved in Hong Kong and Macao, China’s special territories, with their own regulatory agencies. A clinical trial for the continent’s approval is underway.
Vaccination is supposed to be voluntary, but the exaggerated efforts of some local governments and companies have led health officials to issue a warning this week against forced vaccinations.
A hospital in Danzhou, Hainan province in the south of the island, apologized after issuing a notification to staff saying, “Those who are not vaccinated could be fired.”
In Zhejiang Province, an April 2 announcement said that all government departments, Communist Party cadres and people working in universities would be forced to take the lead in the shootings.
The national government has also called for the vaccination of all residents of Ruili, a border town with Myanmar, due to a recent outbreak.
Vaccination can also mean avoiding some of the heavier obstacles that some local institutions have set up in the name of pandemic control.
Beijing student Bright Li said he was vaccinated, so he will no longer need approval to leave campus. Although barely implemented, Li became concerned after the university published posters publicly denouncing a student who left campus without permission last winter after the student left for an area with a confirmed COVID-19 case.
The vaccination mechanism encountered scattered deficiencies and delays.
In Haikou, the capital of Hainan, health authorities have issued a temporary stay to deal a second blow to those not involved in two major future events, “due to the relative tightness” of the vaccine supply. Shortages have also been reported in two southern cities, Foshan in Guangdong Province and Xiamen Port in Fujian Province.
Chinese vaccine manufacturers have expanded their production capacity en masse, and health officials say they are confident that demand can be met by the end of the year.
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Associated Press video producer Olivia Zhang of Beijing, researcher Chen Si of Shanghai and scientific writer Aniruddha Ghosal of New Delhi contributed to the report.