In order to contain the spread of COVID-19, China launched a nationwide mass vaccination campaign in early 2021. By the end of July, more than 3.4 billion COVID-19 vaccine shots had been administered on the Chinese mainland, according to the National Health Commission (NHC).
Among those aged 60 and above, 89.6 percent have received at least one dose, while the full vaccination rate and booster vaccination rate are 84.7 percent and 67.3 percent respectively.
The leaders of the Communist Party of China and the central government have all been vaccinated with the domestic COVID-19 vaccines, Zeng Yixin, vice-minister of NHC, said during a news conference held on July 26, noting that Chinese leaders attach great significance to the pandemic control work and have tremendous confidence in the domestically developed COVID-19 vaccines.
Zeng added that all three vaccines developed domestically had obtained emergency use authorization from the World Health Organization, and over 100 countries have approved Chinese-made shots for public use. Some countries take China-produced vaccines as the only ones that can be used on underage children.
Moreover, Zeng said that the leaders of more than 30 countries, including Turkey, Serbia, Cambodia and Chile, have been vaccinated with Chinese vaccines. All of these facts demonstrate that vaccinations made in China are widely approved by the global community, he emphasized.
Data collected during the mass vaccination campaign showed that China-produced vaccines are safe, Feng Zijian, executive vice president and secretary general of the Chinese Preventive Medicine Association, said at the press conference.
According to Feng, as of May 30, a total of 238,215 side effect cases following vaccinations had been reported, equal to an incidence rate of 70.45 per one million shots.
Overall, the rate of side effects after administering Chinese COVID-19 vaccines was lower than that of other normal vaccines, including polio and flu vaccines, administered in China in 2020. Feng noted that there had been no safety issues over Chinese shots reported in overseas countries and regions, fully demonstrating the safety of China's vaccines.
Regarding developing vaccines against Omicron, China is currently conducting monovalent and multivalent vaccine research and development against Omicron variants through multiple technical routes. "Chinese vaccines still protect against severe illness and death caused by Omicron variants," Feng told reporters.
As to rumors against use of China's COVID-19 vaccines, Wang Fusheng, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, emphasized at the press conference that COVID-19 vaccines do not cause leukemia or diabetes, nor do they cause tumor spreading or antibody-dependent enhancement, as some critics had claimed. The ingredients used in the vaccines are safe for humans.
Wang further noted that clinical monitoring and statistical data show that in the four years before and after the COVID-19 outbreak, the number of visits and hospitalizations for diabetes and leukemia are virtually the same, with no significant changes.