China's mass COVID vaccination drive hits obstacles amid rise in Delta variant cases

China accounts for more than half of the COVID-19 shots administered worldwide, accounting for nearly 60 percent of all the doses globally. The country has been offering free goodies such as eggs, store coupons, and discounted merchandise to encourage the vaccine-hesitant population to get the jab. But the People’s Republic has recently been facing mounting challenges in expanding its mass inoculation campaign, a health official told news agencies. Thus far, Beijing has inoculated over 900 million people, of the total 1.4 billion population. But some health experts speculate that the vaccination rate in China should be higher than 80 percent, an official told a health forum. 

Zheng Zhongwei from the National Health Commission, on Thursday, September 2, told the state-run media that as the highly transmissible Delta variant wreaked havoc in China, the government has faced obstacles in its inoculation campaign although, he did not specify details about the said hurdles. "Recently, as (pushing vaccination work) came to the later stage, it has become increasingly difficult," Zheng was quoted by the state-run media as saying at a health event. He added that people are being recommended to take booster shots for greater protection against the emerging variants, but the official stated that the boosters must yield results for more options to be made available. The country plans to ramp up the booster program as simultaneously it continues to vaccinate the rest of the population. 

WHO condemns booster shots, says just 2% vaccinated in Africa 

Calling out at the “shocking inequities in access to COVID-19 vaccines,” the World Health Organisation [WHO] Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus opposed “widespread use of boosters” for healthy people for now, as he stressed the need to vaccinate the vulnerable population in the poorer countries. Speaking at a press conference in Berlin in person for the Inauguration of the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, Tedros said that the COVID-19 cases and fatalities reported to WHO “declined for the first time” in more than two months, but “ it doesn’t mean much.” He then asserted that many financially backward nations worldwide still witnessed steep increases in cases and deaths, mainly due to the lack of vaccines. 

“More than 5 billion vaccines have now been administered globally, and almost 75 percent of them have been in just 10 countries,” WHO Chief Tedros reminded. “In low-income countries, most of which are in Africa, less than 2 percent of adults are fully vaccinated, compared with almost 50 percent in high‑income countries,” he re-iterated.

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