New Delhi: China is racing ahead with its vaccination programme, administering over 1 crore doses daily, according to official government statistics.
As the country aims to vaccinate 40 per cent of its population — roughly 56 crore — by end of June, an official of the China Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has said daily inoculations could reach 2 crore — equivalent to Delhi’s population — if needed.
In comparison, India — which has a population just short of China’s — administered 24.3 lakh shots in the 24 hours to Tuesday.
China, whose vaccination drive began in the first week of January, has so far not released any estimates on the percentage of population vaccinated against Covid-19. It only reveals the number of shots administered. But, by all accounts, the country that reported the first cases of Covid appears to be surpassing India and other nations in its vaccination drive.
Data from China’s National Health Commission (NHC), which handles the country’s health policy, state that over 52 crore Covid-19 vaccine doses have been administered so far.
News agency Reuters’ vaccination tracker — employing the assumption that these were shots of two-dose vaccines — estimated on 25 May that these many shots would be enough to vaccinate 18.9 per cent of China’s population. In a report dated 24 May, The Sydney Morning Herald cited data compiled by Oxford University to state that China’s vaccination numbers had grown by over 400 per cent since March.
According to the report, on 26 March, China and the rest of the world clocked in with 6.77 people vaccinated for every 100 in the population. Last Thursday, it added, 34.55 per 100 were vaccinated in China compared to 21.6 in the rest of the world.
China is currently using five vaccines, of which three have two-dose regimens. These include two vaccines made by Sinopharm, a state-owned vaccine maker, and one by Sinovac, a private company, all of which have a two-dose regimen.
The vaccine made by Chinese company CanSino Biologics in partnership with the military is a one-dose vaccine, while the fifth and latest — devised by Anhui Zhifei Longcom Biopharmaceutical Co and the Chinese Academy of Sciences — is a three-dose vaccine, with each dose separated by a month.
In India, which has administered over 19.85 crore shots since its drive began on 16 January, just about 3 per cent of the population is fully vaccinated. It has three vaccines in the basket — Covishield, Covaxin and Sputnik V, all of which require a two-dose regimen.
As of 24 May, the US had administered more than 28.6 crore shots, with 13 crore of its population fully vaccinated. Globally, 170 crore shots have been given and 5.1 per cent of the population is fully vaccinated, according to Our World in Data, a research and data platform.
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Daily vaccination rates ‘skyrocketed’ in recent weeks
Daily vaccination rates in China have reportedly “skyrocketed” ever since the nationwide immunisation drive was ramped up in response to small local outbreaks in Liaoning and Anhui provinces.
To ramp up vaccination, the Jiangxi province has said it will suspend first-dose inoculation between 10 and 30 June so that there is enough time to deliver second shots by the end of the month.
According to daily vaccination rates, which China only began providing in late March, the country took 25 days to reach 20 crore shots. It took another 16 days to take the number to 30 crore. It took nine days for the number to rise to 40 crore.
Over the past week, China has been administering more than 1 crore doses per day. According to National Health Commission data, it had administered over 39.29 crore doses by last Monday, which rose to 40.6 crore doses the following Tuesday, 42.2 crore doses by Wednesday, 43.5 crore by Thursday, and 44.9 crore by Friday.
Capital Beijing is in the lead with the highest vaccination rate. As of last Wednesday,1.27 crore (58 per cent of its population) had completed the two-dose regimen and 70 per cent had been administered at least one shot. Its downtown Dongcheng district has reportedly fully vaccinated 80 per cent of the adult population.
Shao Yiming, a researcher with China Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, told state broadcaster CCTV that daily inoculations could reach 2 crore if needed.
Shao said that inoculating 80-85 per cent of the population to establish herd immunity is a target China can achieve within the year.
China’s vaccines
Earlier this month, a vaccine made by Sinopharm got WHO backing — the first vaccine developed by a non-Western country to do so. The WHO had previously approved the vaccines made by Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and Moderna.
However, the Chinese companies developing the vaccines have not publicly published peer-reviewed data on clinical trial research and have been criticised for lack of transparency.
In April, Gao Fu, China’s top disease control official, said current vaccines offer low protection and mixing them is among the strategies being considered to boost their effectiveness. He later clarified he was speaking about all the Covid vaccines, not China’s alone.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
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