At the entrance to this market in Beijing, the walker is greeted by an announcement broadcast continuously by a loudspeaker: “Vaccination, vaccination, come and get the vaccination. You will see, you will have good advantages. For seniors over 60, if you come here to get vaccinated, we offer you boxes of milk. After one dose, we give you 200 yuan (30 euros). Also with other gifts, milk and oil. And for those who cannot travel, we can deliver the vaccine to your home.”
The subject of the Covid-19 vaccine is sensitive in China as the country still defends its “Zero Covid” policy and the protest against strict confinement in Shanghai is gaining momentum. Those who refuse to be vaccinated are rather frowned upon and prefer not to express themselves. But a 68-year-old retiree, who is one of the reluctant and assumes, confides to us: “I do not want it. Why would I get the vaccine? No matter what they say, I don’t believe it. Me and my wife are not going to get vaccinated.”
“You see that people who have been vaccinated have still caught Covid. And then this virus always mutates. If there is a new variant, the doses that people have had will be useless.
A 68-year-old Chinese retireeat franceinfo
A 71-year-old Beijinger whom we also meet explains that she resisted for a long time before being vaccinated a few days ago: “I just did the first dose, because I have a chronic kidney disease. My doctor told me that I had to get vaccinated, my children also asked me to. So finally, I went to do it “.
China wants to convince seniors to vaccinate more: the report by Sébastien Berriot
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Mainly because of seniors, China has not achieved herd immunity. The city of Shanghai announced on Tuesday a death toll of ten linked to Covid-19 for a month, a consequence of the worst epidemic recovery that the country has known since the end of 2019. The effectiveness of vaccines is also called into question.
For Professor Jin Dongyan, one of Hong Kong’s most renowned virologists, China must accept other vaccines than its own, which should facilitate an easing of health restrictions: “The ‘Zero Covid’ policy is not sustainable with the Omicron variant. We need to understand the reality, the virus is now so weak that a ‘Zero Covid’ policy is useless, it should not be put in place. But why do we practice it anyway? Because the elderly in China, the most vulnerable group, are not sufficiently vaccinated. We have not yet built herd immunity. We have been saying for a long time that the commercialization of imported vaccines must be approved as soon as possible.”
“If we really care about people’s lives and health, we need to approve messenger RNA vaccines like Pfizer as soon as possible.”
Jin Dongyan, Chinese virologistat franceinfo
Beijing has authorized the anti-Covid treatment developed by Pfizer, but the vaccine from the American laboratory is still not recognized in China.