Unvaccinated seniors in China: “It could end really badly”

Benjamin Eyssel
ARD-Studio Peking

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So did a 69-year-old who received her third vaccination last year. “The government told me where to go and then I got vaccinated,” she says. “It’s good for me and for others too. If I get infected with Corona, I won’t get seriously ill.”

Even if many here think so, not all of them do. Like this 84-year-old man: “I’m so old and I don’t want to exercise that much. My children want me to get vaccinated, but I don’t want it.” There are many people in the vaccination center, visitors have to stand and wait a long time.

National health agency warns

Most countries vaccinated the elderly first, then the younger ones. China did it the other way around: first vaccinate the young people who meet other people, travel and work, keep the economy running. Then the older ones. No country in the world has vaccinated more against Covid-19 than China.

In the most populous country in the world, the 1.4 billion inhabitants have been administered more than three billion doses of vaccine – almost exclusively the Chinese inactivated vaccines Sinopharm and Sinovac. According to official figures, the vaccination rate for the entire population is almost 90 percent.

But to date, many older people have not been vaccinated, said Zeng Yixin of the National Health Administration at a press conference on March 18. “We have 52 million people over the age of 60 who are not fully vaccinated,” he said. Most of them are older than 80. “Half of those over 80 have been fully vaccinated, almost 20 percent have received a booster, but the vaccination rate is still very low.”

Zero Covid Policy Still Effective?

There are currently more Covid cases in China than in two years. With a few thousand new infections every day, the numbers are significantly lower than in most other countries. The background is China’s de facto closed borders, tough lockdowns for the smallest outbreaks, mass tests and travel bans.

But the question is whether the highly contagious omicron variant can be used in the long term to maintain the zero-Covid policy and what happens if the virus gets out of control. “That could be a huge problem if Omikron slips out of their hands,” says virologist Friedemann Weber from the University of Giessen. “With such a large number of vulnerable and susceptible people, it could end really badly.”

More than 6000 dead in one week

What happens when the virus gets out of control and hits many unvaccinated old people can be observed in Hong Kong right now. China’s special administrative region, like the mainland, has implemented a zero-Covid policy that has worked well for around two years. There were hardly any cases. This is one of the reasons why many people felt safe and saw no need to be vaccinated.

Then came the Omicron variant. In the past few weeks there have been tens of thousands of new infections every day, 6,500 people have died of Covid in the city of seven million – most of them in the past few weeks. The vast majority were elderly and unvaccinated. Hong Kong currently has the highest death rate related to Covid-19 in the world.

Government relies on domestic vaccines

The vaccination rate in mainland China is higher than in Hong Kong. But the sheer number of unvaccinated, especially older people in the most populous country in the world could become a problem. In addition, the state and party leadership relied exclusively on domestic dead vaccines. According to studies, these do not protect as well as, for example, mRNA vaccines from Moderna or BioNTech/Pfizer.

“It’s taking revenge a bit now that the in-house vaccines were given in particular,” says the virologist Weber. They should have been combined more with mRNA vaccines. “But only dead vaccines, I do think that’s a problem.”

There is no compulsory vaccination

In addition, the healthcare system in mainland China is not as well developed as that in Hong Kong – and could reach its limits even faster. There is no compulsory vaccination in China. The state and party leadership is now increasingly calling on older people to be vaccinated.

Experts are calling for action to be taken now before it’s too late. Wang Hesheng from the national health authority finds clear words: “The outbreak in Hong Kong must be a lesson for us. If the vaccination rate among the elderly is low, the number of severe courses and deaths will be high.”