This content was published on March 21, 2021 – 10:46
Beijing, Mar 21 (EFE) .- China has so far administered 74.96 million doses of vaccines against the coronavirus among its inhabitants, reported today the spokesman for the National Health Commission of the Asian country, Mi Feng.
In a press conference, Mi said that in less than a week almost 10 million vaccines have been supplied, in line with the country’s goal of accelerating the immunization of its 1.4 billion inhabitants and vaccinating about 40% of them until next June.
The spokesperson said that Beijing is considering implementing differentiated policies for issuing visas and controls for travelers arriving in China from abroad, depending on the progress of vaccination in the countries of origin.
In any case, the deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Feng Zijian, said that at the moment the possibility of excluding those vaccinated from the strict quarantine measures applied by cities like Beijing to those arriving from abroad is not contemplated. .
China will pay attention to the progress of the international vaccine passport, wherever it is issued, and will be able to adjust virus control measures once its population reaches a high level of immunity, he said.
At the same press conference, a spokesman for the Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac indicated that 70 million doses of its vaccine have been administered globally, although he did not specify how many of them had been supplied in China.
According to Mao Junfeng, from the Ministry of Industry, the production planned for 2021 in the Asian country can fully cover the needs of China.
Some areas of the country such as the capital, Beijing, are already inoculating residents over 60 after completing the vaccination campaign for groups considered at risk such as officials, port employees and transporters, according to local press.
Next week China has offered to vaccinate foreign journalists stationed in the country as well as members of diplomatic legations with one of the vaccines from the state pharmaceutical Sinopharm.
As the head of the country’s Center for Disease Control, Gao Fu, recently explained to CGTN state television, China hopes to vaccinate between 70% and 80% of its population by the end of this year or mid-2022 and then reach herd immunity.
To do this, the country should inoculate between 900,000 and 1,000 million people, according to Gao.
So far, the Chinese authorities have authorized the marketing of four covid vaccines: two from Sinopharm and one from Cansino and Sinovac.
Also, a total of 16 vaccines developed in China have already started clinical trials, a government official revealed in late January.
For the moment, the Beijing authorities have not given the green light to the commercialization in Chinese territory of any serum developed abroad despite the fact that, for example, the pharmaceutical company Fosun Pharma signed an agreement to exclusively distribute the Pfizer vaccine and BioNTech in China.
On March 16, Beijing announced the approval of the use for emergency cases of a vaccine that uses recombinant protein subunits, the first of its kind authorized by the Asian country.
This vaccine has been developed by the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in conjunction with Anhui Zhifei Longcom Biopharmaceutical. EFE
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