BEIJING: China has vaccinated more than 100 million people and is still enlarging the scale of the vaccination program as an effort to build a massive immunity shield. In recent weeks, the country has accelerated the vaccination work to wider groups of people, including those in rural areas and more remote regions.
Chinese experts have estimated that to achieve herd immunity, 80 percent of the population needs to be vaccinated, which means more than 1 billion people in China have to get the COVID-19 vaccine. China’s maximum capability for vaccination is 10 million shots daily, so it would take 100 days to reach the 1 billion goal, Shao Yiming, a physician and immunologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
To promote the vaccination work in rural regions, medical personnel and local officials often need to make more efforts and show extra patience and caution in order to ease the doubts and confusion among residents.
In Linquan county, East China’s Anhui Province, to help villagers, especially those who do not have smartphones and are not well informed, the rural doctors bring vaccination materials to them and explain the vaccination in detail.
“Luckily, a few farsighted villagers registered to get vaccinated at first and they said there were no adverse reactions and no fees charged. After that, other villagers poured into the center,” a local member of the staff surnamed Yao at Chengdong Street Health Center told the Global Times on Wednesday. Linquan County aims to inoculate more than 40 percent of its permanent resident population by June 20 this year, which is about 755,900 people.
“To dispel the concerns of villagers, the village cadres volunteered to take the lead in vaccination,” an official surnamed Liu who is in charge of vaccination in Facheng town under Haiyang, East China’s Shandong Province, told the Global Times. “The county government also invited voice actors to record audio explaining the vaccination process and played the audio on loudspeakers in each village,” Liu added.
– The Daily Mail-Global Times News exchange item
