China Begins Preparing For Mass Vaccination

Illustration of vaccine administration (doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - The Beijing Municipal Government has started to administer a mass COVID-19 vaccination against community groups classified as high risk. In the vaccination process, some residents will be quarantined in a number of hotels.

It is planned that the vaccine will be divided into nine groups of people aged 18 years to 59 years. They will get the vaccine before the Chinese New Year holiday season, at the end of January 2021.

Citing the official local media website, those who received the vaccine were customs inspectors for imported frozen foodstuffs, Chinese nationals who worked or studied abroad, and transportation sector officials.

Vaccines will be administered in one of the health service centers that are temporarily built in the Chinese capital. Vaccinated people were seated to wait 30 minutes for medical observation.

So far, China's pharmaceutical industry has developed at least five COVID-19 vaccines from four manufacturers tested in a number of countries including Russia, Egypt and Mexico. Despite the success of developing a vaccine, the certification process is still being carried out before it is distributed to many countries.

One of the developers, China National Pharmaceutical Group, known as Sinopharm, said in November it had applied for market approval for the use of its vaccine in China. Where the vaccine will be devoted to emergency use for health workers and other people who are considered high risk of infection.

"We must prepare for large-scale production," Deputy Prime Minister Sun Chunlan was quoted as saying by the Xinhua News Agency.