Amid unprecedented demonstrations against restrictions imposed to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus, Chinese authorities said they were stepping up their campaign to vaccinate the elderly.
The relatively low vaccination rate among the elderly is a major obstacle to China’s relaxation of its “zero Covid” strategy.
How many seniors have received the vaccine?
China has acknowledged that there are relatively low rates of vaccination against Covid among the elderly, who are more likely to develop serious complications or die if they contract the virus, compared to younger age groups.
In April of this year, official figures showed that only 20 percent of those over the age of 80 received two doses of the vaccine plus a booster dose, while less than 50 percent of those between the ages of 70 and 79 belonged to the same category. .
The latest figures released by the Chinese authorities, which came at a time when demonstrations protesting the lockdown measures were breaking out across the country, indicate a rise of 40 percent in the number of people over the age of 80 who received all necessary doses, including the booster dose. .
The rates of vaccination of the elderly in China are much lower than their counterparts in both the United States and the United Kingdom, for example.
Official figures released in the UK in November indicated that 80 percent of those over 80 in England had received a booster dose in the previous three months.
China has also announced a plan to increase vaccination rates among the elderly.
Media reports indicate that China has set itself a goal of ensuring that 90 percent of those over the age of 80 receive either the first two doses of the vaccine or the booster dose by the end of January.
Why haven’t more elderly people been vaccinated?
The head of China’s Covid expert panel, Professor Liang Wannian, told the BBC that reluctance to vaccinate among the elderly was among the problems.
He says, “Many elderly people have some diseases. They think that it will not be safe for them to receive the vaccine. But it is safe in fact.”
In contrast to other countries vaccinating the elderly first, China prioritized people of working age when vaccination campaigns began at the end of 2020.
Lockdowns in Beijing: Public opposition to restrictions to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is growing
She has also tested her vaccines abroad, in countries with mostly younger populations — as well as telling older Chinese people that there hasn’t been enough data on vaccine efficacy and safety to recommend them.
Health infrastructure is also very important for vaccination campaigns, says Professor George Liu of La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. Professor Liu says local communities in China lack that infrastructure.
“Unlike children’s vaccination plans, local health facilities do not have a comprehensive list of elderly people’s names and vaccination schedules,” he adds.
Confidence in locally manufactured vaccines has also been undermined by a series of health scandals that have erupted in recent years. Those scandals included issues with safety and production standards for vaccines against rabies, diphtheria and tetanus.
Are vaccines made in China effective?
China has developed and produced its own vaccines. These vaccines use an inactivated virus to train the body to fight the virus as a whole.
Although they are effective, they are not as effective as the mRNA (messenger RNA) vaccines used in other countries, which focus on the important part of the virus that infects the body’s cells.
Research indicates that two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine confer 90 percent protection against serious illness or death, but the percentage achieved by two doses of the Sinovac vaccine, which is one of the most widely used Chinese vaccines, is only 70 percent.
Also, long periods of lockdown in China meant there was less mixing of people.
This in turn means that even those who received the vaccine were less exposed to the virus and thus benefited less from what is called “hybrid immunity” – the protection the body gets through a combination of the vaccine and infection with the virus itself.
The BBC’s health and misinformation correspondent, Rachel Schreyer, says: “That immune wall that gets built up … through exposure.” [للفيروس] Naturally and receiving effective vaccines is what made Covid something that most other countries in the world are now ready to live with.
In addition, the emergence of new strains of the Omicron mutant spread even among vaccinated people, which weakens the possibility of eradicating the virus.
In the early stages of vaccination campaigns during the outbreak of the epidemic, China maximized its efforts to produce a vaccine against the Corona virus.
And last year, it claimed to have manufactured half of the global stock of Covid vaccines that existed at the time.
Therefore, its reluctance to use vaccines developed in other countries is not surprising.
Germany has urged China to consider using mRNA vaccines developed in the West. At the present time, these vaccines are difficult to obtain in China, as they are only available to foreigners residing in the country.
It is believed that China is currently developing its own vaccine using mRNA technology, but it is not clear when that vaccine will be ready for use.
