What worries about the delta variant, according to a specialist 0:39
(CNN) -
In a few days, China will reach a staggering 1 billion doses in its vaccination campaign against covid-19, a scale and speed unrivaled in any other country in the world.
As of Wednesday, China had applied more than 945 million doses, three times the amount applied in the United States and almost 40% of the 2.5 billion doses applied worldwide.
The number is all the more remarkable given that their rollout got off to a slow start.
China only reached its first million doses on March 27, two weeks behind the US, but the pace picked up significantly in May, with more than 500 million doses applied in the past month, according to data from the National Commission. of Health of China.
On Tuesday alone, he applied more than 20 million doses.
At that rate, it is likely to exceed 1 billion doses this weekend.
Vaccinating a country of 1.4 billion people against Covid-19 is a huge task.
Due to the successful containment of the coronavirus in China, many residents initially saw little urgency in getting vaccinated.
A history of safety scandals related to domestic vaccines also contributed to the public hesitation.
But several recent local outbreaks, including in the northern provinces of Anhui and Liaoning and Guangdong in the south, have fueled fears of infection, prompting a rush to get vaccinated in affected regions.
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For those still reluctant, China has a powerful tool in its arsenal: a top-down one-party system that is ubiquitous in scope and forceful in action, and an expanding bureaucracy that can mobilize quickly.
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The top-down approach has been touted by officials as a strength of the Chinese system that helped curb the virus, and has again been implemented to speed up vaccination.
The all-out campaign to 'vaccinate everyone who can be vaccinated' is taking place across the country, in both major cities and small villages, with government workers reaching out to neighborhoods to convince people that get vaccinated.
At state-owned companies, meanwhile, bosses urge employees to get vaccinations, while vaccination sites offer benefits, ranging from shopping vouchers to free groceries and ice cream.
Governments around the world have tried carrot and stick approaches to encourage people to get vaccinated.
But in China, punitive measures can sometimes take a darker turn.
Some residential complexes have warned residents that they will not be able to re-enter unless vaccinated, according to resident posts on social media.
A shopping mall in Shanghai posted a sign at the entrance requiring customers to show their vaccination certificate to enter.
A city park in northern Hebei province turned away unvaccinated visitors and guided them to nearby vaccination sites.
As the number of vaccines skyrocketed, some local governments even suspended inoculating the first dose this month, to make sure there were enough for people to get the second dose on time.
China's National Health Commission does not provide a breakdown of how many people have been fully vaccinated.
But the distribution is uneven.
By the first week of June, the major cities of Beijing and Shanghai had fully inoculated nearly 70% and 50% of their residents, respectively.
But the rate in Guangdong and Shandong provinces remained below 20%, according to Reuters.
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Zhong Nanshan, one of the government's top epidemiologists and advisers, said China aims to fully vaccinate 40% of its population by the end of the month and double that percentage by the end of the year.
Due to its huge population, China's doses per 100 people still lag behind countries like the United States and Great Britain.
But if your inoculation campaign can keep up with the current pace, it will catch up quickly.
Covid-19