Health experts in China say their country is lagging in its coronavirus vaccination rollout because it has the disease largely under control, but plans to inoculate 40 per cent of its population by June.
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Zhong Nanshan, the leader of a group of experts attached to the National Health Commission, said the country has delivered 52.52 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines as of February 28.
He was speaking on Monday at an online forum between US and Chinese medical experts hosted by the Brookings Institution and Tsinghua University.
The target is the first China has offered publicly since it began its mass immunisation campaign for key groups in mid-December.
China has been slow to vaccinate its people relative to other countries, inoculating only 3.56 per cent of its population of 1.4 billion so far, according to Zhong.
Ranked first in the world in terms of percentage of population is Israel, which has vaccinated over 90 per cent of its people. The US has vaccinated about 22 per cent of its population.
Chinese health experts say the country has enough vaccine supply for its population, although the country has pledged to provide close to half a billion doses abroad, roughly 10 times the number it has delivered at home.
"The current vaccination pace is very low due to outbreak control (being) so good in China, but I think the capacity is enough," said Zhang Wenhong, an infectious diseases expert based in Shanghai who also spoke on the panel.
Developers of China's four currently approved vaccines have said they could manufacture up to 2.6 billion doses by the end of this year. Still, vaccinating China's massive population will be a daunting task.
Even at the rate of vaccinating 10 million people a day, it would take roughly seven months to vaccinate 70 per cent of its population, Zhang noted.
Australian Associated Press
