China's Covid vaccines are safe and have even been given to top leaders like President Xi Jinping, health authorities said on Saturday, in a bid to reassure Chinese people of their quality.

A year and a half after the start of the vaccination campaign in the country, this is the first time that China has clearly mentioned the vaccination status of the leaders of the communist regime.

“Great confidence” in vaccines

The Asian giant is currently only registering a few hundred new positive cases per day and the authorities are having great difficulty convincing some Chinese people to get vaccinated – especially the elderly.

The population feels no sense of urgency because of the health situation and many residents are wary of the quality of Chinese vaccines, following several scandals over the past decade.

“All of the current leaders of the Communist Party and the state have been vaccinated against Covid-19 and they have all been vaccinated with vaccines produced in China”, announced Zeng Yixin, the vice-minister of the country on Saturday. Health.

This category obviously includes President Xi Jinping or Prime Minister Li Keqiang.

“This demonstrates that our leaders take the prevention and control of Covid-19 very seriously, and have great confidence in Chinese anti-Covid vaccines,” Zeng Yixin said at a press conference.

Localized confinements

The most used Chinese vaccines are that of the private laboratory Sinovac and those of the state pharmaceutical giant Sinopharm.

China has not yet authorized the use of foreign Covid vaccines on its soil.

The authorities are working to defuse the fears fueled, according to them, by certain information disseminated on the Internet.

"Covid vaccines do not cause leukemia, diabetes" and "do not cause tumors to proliferate," Wang Fusheng, director of the infectious diseases department at the 301 Military Hospital in Beijing, told reporters on Saturday.

China continues to apply a strict health policy, in particular in the name of protecting the elderly, who are poorly vaccinated.

Among those over 60, if 89.6% received at least one dose, only 67.3% received three doses, a rate which drops to 38.4% among those over 80, said Saturday Mr. Zeng.

In addition to the drastic reduction in international air links since 2020, China places people who test positive in mandatory quarantine and decrees localized confinements as soon as a few cases appear.

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