Amid some concerns over the efficacy of the vaccines in use, Beijing has put more than 180 million Covid-19 shots into the arms of its citizens, in an effort to immunize the nation against the virus.
In a daily update on Friday, China’s National Health Commission announced that 183.55 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine had been administered across the country as of April 15. The figure equates to approximately 13 doses per 100 people in China.
In terms of total vaccines distributed, China is still positioned behind the US, where nearly 200 million jabs have been administered. That figure is equal to 58 doses per 100 people in the US.
On Saturday, Beijing’s top disease control official said the vaccines in use were not as effective as they would have hoped, adding that there were plans to address this. “We will solve the issue that current vaccines don’t have very high protection rates,” said Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Gao suggested that China would start offering its citizens a different second dose in order to boost immunity. “It’s now under consideration whether we should use different vaccines from different technical lines for the immunization process,” he noted, before praising the mRNA technology behind the Pfizer and Moderna jabs.
In a statement given to the Associated Press on Sunday, Gao clarified that he had been talking about “vaccines in the world, not particularly for China.”
Official data suggest the pandemic is under control in China, with only 11 cases registered across the whole country on Thursday.
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