Despite the protests in the street, Beijing is not disarming in its “zero Covid” policy.
The Chinese government has even announced that it wants to accelerate the vaccination of the elderly, after registering a record number of cases in recent days.
The National Health Commission (NHC) has pledged, in an advisory, to “accelerate the increase in vaccination rates for people aged over 80 and to continue to increase the vaccination rate for people aged 60 and over. at 79 years old.
To this end, “a special working group will be set up (…) for the vaccination of the elderly against Covid”.
The vaccination rate in China, particularly among the elderly, is one of the arguments regularly put forward by the government to justify its strict "zero Covid" health policy, with repeated confinements, quarantines on the arrival of foreigners and almost daily tests for the population.
Only 65.8% of people over the age of 80 are fully vaccinated, NHC officials said at a press conference on Tuesday, as China still has not approved RNA vaccines deemed more effective. .
China recorded 38,421 new local cases on Tuesday, close to the record since the start of the pandemic, reached this weekend.
But the vast majority of cases are asymptomatic and their number remains tiny compared to the Chinese population (1.4 billion inhabitants), which is beginning to rebel against the restrictions.
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