China Aims to Vaccinate 40% of Its Population Before End of June

(Bloomberg) -- China plans to vaccinate 40% of its 1.4 billion people against Covid-19 by the end of June, the country's top health expert said.

The ambitious target to inoculate a staggering 560 million people means the world's most populous country will have to pick up its pace, as only 3.5% have been vaccinated so far. As of Feb. 28, 52.5 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines had been administered, according to Zhong Nanshan, a senior medical adviser to the Chinese government.

China's success in controlling the outbreak allowed it to take a more cautious approach to vaccination, with few people falling sick even as the number infected in the U.S. and Europe soared. Because the virus is still circulating in many areas, the vicious cycle of illness and death will continue until the majority of the world's population is protected against it via vaccination or infection.

“The current vaccination pace is very low today due to the outbreak control in the early stages,” said Zhang Wenhong, director of infectious diseases at Shanghai Huashan Hospital and a government adviser on Covid response, during a video conference late Monday. “The vaccine capacity, however, is very high and is expected to increase to 2.1 billion doses by end of 2021.”

Zhong and Zhang were among the speakers at the conference co-hosted by the Brookings Institution and Tsinghua University.

China has lagged behind its U.S. and European counterparts in the immunization drive, despite performing far better in controlling its outbreak through aggressive blitz-testing campaigns, hard lockdowns and quarantines imposed whenever flareups occurred. China has delivered slightly more than three doses for every 100 people, compared to over 20 in the U.S., 30 in the U.K. and almost 90 in Israel, according to Bloomberg's vaccine tracker.

China now has four domestically developed and produced vaccines that have been approved for use, after the regulator green-lit entrants from CanSino Biologics Inc. and Sinopharm Group Co.'s Wuhan subsidiary last week.

Facing Resistance, China Pushes Back 50 Million Vaccine Target

China previously pushed back by two months its plan to inoculate 50 million people before the Lunar New Year, as concerns about supplies and hesitancy around the domestically produced vaccines complicated its immunization efforts.

While China tackled its few flareups quickly after suppressing the initial outbreak in central Wuhan, the country is still struggling to balance opening its economy and controlling the virus in a sustainable manner. It should ease up in its approach, allowing small local outbreaks without aggressively shutting down all activity in the region to keep the economy strong and active, George Gao, head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said at the conference.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

With assistance from Bloomberg