-Daily inoculation soars to three million within a week
BEIJING: China’s mass vaccination campaign has entered the fast track with its daily inoculations leaping from 1 million to nearly 3 million within a week. Experts expected China’s overall inoculation rate to surpass 10 million per day, putting it on target to administering vaccines to 40 percent of the population.
Vaccines produced by China have been given to more than 100 million people at home and abroad, proving that the vaccine is safe and effective. In the next step, China will accelerate the promotion of free vaccination for the entire population, from high-risk and key people to the general population, making it the “largest-ever centralized vaccination program,” the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council, China’s cabinet, announced on Wednesday. According to the newest data, China has administered 82.84 million vaccine doses against COVID-19 as of Tuesday, up from 74.96 million by Saturday, which is equivalent to 2.62 million doses per day.
Comparing the data released on Saturday with that from March 14, the total inoculation number was 64.98 million, meaning the daily number of doses across the country was about 1.5 million. China’s National Health Commission has been releasing the national inoculation data every day since Sunday. Previously, the commission only reported the number at press conferences, which were usually held weekly.
The Global Times learnt from a source that China, at a mobilization conference held by the State Council on Monday, set itself the vaccination target of covering about 40 percent of the population by around June, which means that the daily inoculation number will jump to about 10 million doses.
As part of efforts to accelerate vaccination across the country, the source told the Global Times that China is set to expand the number of vaccination venues from 20,000 to 50,000. In comparison, the US has administered 128 million doses as of Tuesday morning and its current average daily vaccination doses is about 2.49 million, Bloomberg reported, making its daily administration rate slightly lower than China’s current 2.62 million doses. At this pace, the US will take another five months to cover 75 percent of the population, Bloomberg reported.
India, which had dubbed its vaccination drive the biggest in the world, had only administered 50.075 million doses since January, and its daily vaccination was only about 2.173 million doses as of Tuesday, both The Hindu and Bloomberg reported. The figure lags far behind its high expectation of inoculating 300 million people, or nearly one quarter of the population, by July.
Tao Lina, a Shanghai-based vaccine observer, told the Global Times that China’s inoculation speed is expected to experience a bell curve, meaning the rate could be slow in the beginning and faster later on, before it drops slowly. The daily inoculation rate nationwide has the potential to peak at about 15 million doses, as China is capable of creating a miracle when the whole society pools its strengths to bring about mass vaccination, he said.
– The Daily Mail-Global Times News exchange item
