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Coronavirus China
ChinaScience

Covid-19: China tops 1 billion full vaccination target but Delta challenges herd immunity

  • Country leads the world in doses given and people covered, senior health official says
  • 89 per cent of Beijing’s population has completed the inoculation regimen

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A senior health official says China leads the world in coronavirus vaccine doses given and the number of people covered. Photo: DPA
Zhuang Pinghui
More than 1.01 billion people have been fully inoculated with Covid-19 vaccines in China, but the highly transmissible Delta variant is still challenging the country’s target to build herd immunity.

More than 2.16 billion doses had been administered and 1 billion people fully inoculated by Wednesday, Lei Zhenglong, National Health Commission disease prevention chief, said on Thursday.

That total included 170 million doses given to 95 million teenagers and 390 million doses taken by 200 million people aged over 60.

“We rank the top in the world in terms of total number of doses and number of people covered, and have one of the highest vaccination rates,” Lei said.

According to Our World in Data, 54 per cent of the US population, 30.7 per cent of people in the European Union, 13.5 per cent of India’s population have been fully vaccinated. Malta tops the world with 82.9 per cent of its 500,000 or so people fully vaccinated.

Meanwhile, in Beijing 20.3 million people have had at least one dose, with 19.5 million fully inoculated. More than 97.4 per cent of the adult population, or 89 per cent of the total population, of the Chinese capital has completed a full regimen, according to Beijing’s health commission.

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