BEIJING: As of June 30, more than 560 million Chinese citizens had received both doses of a two-shot COVID-19 vaccine, meaning 40 percent of China’s population had been fully vaccinated against the disease, Gao Fu, director-general of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Tuesday.
“Now, we have started our mass inoculation program for the latter half of the year,” Gao said during the 23rd Annual Meeting of the China Association for Science and Technology.
As of July 22, China had administered over 1.5 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines, according to the National Health Commission.
By early last week, around 26.3 percent of the world’s population had been inoculated with at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, amounting to a total of 3.66 billion doses administered globally with around 30 million doses administered each day, Gao said. However, only 1 percent of the people in developing countries had received at least one dose.
“To tackle new variants of the coronavirus, sharing COVID-19 vaccines should be a part of the solution so that all countries can have access to them and inoculate their population, allowing us to stem the global transmission of the disease,” he said. “If the world doesn’t share its vaccine, then the virus will share the world.” As of June 12, China has supplied 500 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines and concentrates to more than 100 countries and international organizations, accounting for one-sixth of the global output.
– The Daily Mail-China Daily News exchange item
