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Coronavirus pandemic
ChinaScience

Reopen China’s borders when vaccination at home is high and cases overseas are low, says top doctor

  • Zhong Nanshan says 80 to 85 per cent of China’s 1.4 billion people should be vaccinated before border restrictions are removed
  • China reports one symptomatic local case in the city of Harbin and two asymptomatic local cases in Ili Kazakh autonomous prefecture in Xinjiang

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Dr Zhong Nanshan says that when the death rate becomes very low, having Covid-19 could be part of the norm. Photo: Reuters
Jack Lau
China should only remove all its border restrictions once there were few infections in other countries and the vast majority of the Chinese population was vaccinated against the coronavirus, the country’s leading respiratory diseases expert said on Sunday.
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In an interview with the Southern People Weekly magazine, Dr Zhong Nanshan said 80 to 85 per cent of China’s 1.4 billion people would have to be vaccinated, a milestone that could be reached by the end of the year. However, maintaining the strictest epidemic control measures would be unsustainable, putting great stress on China, he said.

“Why are we still employing strict measures to prevent and control the disease? Our vaccination rate has not reached over 80 per cent yet. Prevention is therefore still very important,” he said.

China largely controlled the spread of the coronavirus within its borders, even before Covid-19 vaccines were available, and sporadic outbreaks were suppressed by locking down residential communities and carrying out multiple rounds of testing, with tens of millions of tests carried out within days.

At least 1.1 billion people, or 78 per cent of China’s population, had received at least the first dose of a vaccine by September 19, according to the State Council’s Covid-19 task force.

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On Monday, China reported only one symptomatic local case in the city of Harbin, the former epicentre of the outbreak in China’s northeast, and two asymptomatic local cases in Ili Kazakh autonomous prefecture in far western Xinjiang. Of the 39 imported cases, 26 patients showed symptoms.

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