Morace Vucic kao njegov brat iz Kine
Hong Kong (CNN)
Unvaccinated residents in parts of China will be banned from accessing public services including hospitals, schools and nursing homes, as the country targets an inoculation rate of at least 80% against Covid-19.
Over the past week, dozens of county-level governments in at least eight provinces have published notices warning citizens they have until late July or early August to receive their vaccinations, after which they will face a variety of restrictions on everyday life.
"Everyone is responsible for the prevention and control of the epidemic, and vaccination starts with me!" read one
notice issued this week by Dingnan county in Jiangxi province, which is home to about 220,000 people. The notice added that "in principal" unvaccinated residents would be denied access to schools, public transport and medical facilities, among other amenities and services, starting from July 26.
The push by local governments to boost vaccination rates comes as the ruling Communist Party outlined its goal of achieving so-called
"herd immunity" -- the point at which enough people have either been infected or vaccinated to end community transmission -- by December this year.
Shao Yiming, an epidemiologist with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told state media that given the protection rate of Chinese vaccines is below 100%, China will need to fully vaccinate 80% to 85% of residents, equivalent to 1 billion of the country's 1.4 total population, in order to meet the December deadline.
With China having largely contained the virus' spread, many residents initially saw little need to get vaccinated. A history of safety scandals involving domestic vaccines also contributed to public hesitancy. However, several recent local outbreaks, including in the northern Anhui and Liaoning provinces, and Guangdong in the south, have fueled fears of infection, prompting a rush to get vaccinated in affected regions.
And across the country, the vaccination rate has accelerated in recent months, with more than 10 million shots administered per day on average. As of Wednesday, the Chinese government had administered
1.4 billion Covid-19 vaccine doses, according to state media estimates, though it remains unclear as to the total percentage of the population who have received two shots.
The all-out campaign has seen government workers descending on neighborhoods in efforts to convince people to get vaccinated, with vaccination sites offering benefits, ranging from shopping vouchers to free groceries and ice cream.
But experts cautioned that many residents who have yet to receive a single dose would be harder to reach, especially in rural areas, leading local governments to take more drastic measures to ensure herd immunity.
"All those strategies they used to entice people to get their vaccine ... may not work in this next stage of vaccination efforts," said Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations.
"Making it mandatory may be the only workable solution to the problem," he added.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/15/...rictions-zhejiang-jiangxi-intl-hnk/index.html
