China Will Begin Immunizing Children As Young As Three Years Old

The COVID-19 vaccine will be administered to children as young as three years old in China, where 76 percent of the population has been completely vaccinated, and authorities have implemented a zero-tolerance attitude for outbreaks.

Local municipal and provincial administrations in at least five provinces have recently published letters stating that children between the ages of three and eleven would be forced to have their immunizations.

China Will Begin Immunizing Children As Young As Three Years Old

The extension of the vaccine effort comes at a time when areas of China are implementing additional measures to attempt to contain tiny outbreaks of the disease.

Gansu, a northern province that is mainly reliant on tourism, halted all tourist attractions on Monday after fresh COVID-19 cases were discovered.

There has been an epidemic of flu in regions of Inner Mongolia, and residents there have been instructed to remain inside.

According to the National Health Commission, 35 additional instances of local transmission had been discovered in the previous 24 hours, with four of them occurring in Gansu. Another 19 instances were discovered in the Inner Mongolia area, with the other cases being detected across the nation. Throughout the epidemic, China has used lockdowns, quarantines, and mandatory testing for the virus and has virtually eliminated incidences of local infection while immunizing 1.07 billion individuals out of a total population of 1.4 billion.

The government is apprehensive about the spread of the more virulent delta strain by travelers and the possibility of having a thoroughly vaccinated populace ahead of the Beijing Olympics in February of this year. International viewers have already been barred from the Games, and athletes will be required to remain in a bubble that separates them from the general public.

According to publicly available statistics, China’s most extensively used vaccinations, manufactured by Sinopharm and Sinovac, have shown effectiveness in reducing serious sickness and viral transmission. However, the question of whether they provide definite protection against the delta form has not been resolved, despite authorities’ assertions that they do. Hubei, Fujian, and Hainan provinces have all issued provincial-level warnings informing residents of the new vaccine requirements. At the same time, individual cities in Zhejiang and Hunan provinces have also issued similar notices.

Even though China licensed two vaccines, Sinopharm’s from the Beijing Institute of Biological Products and Sinovac, for children ages 3-17 in June, the country has only been vaccinating people aged 12 and older.

In August, Chinese officials granted approval to a third, Sinopharm’s from the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products. Following the licensing of the vaccinations for use in children in China, foreign governments started administering the doses to children in their respective countries after receiving domestic authorization.

Cambodia employs both Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines in children ages 6 to 11 years old. Chilean regulators authorizedSinovac for use in youngsters as young as six years old. Children as young as three years old were given approval for the Sinopharm vaccination by Argentine officials.

Many poor nations who were left out of the rush to get vaccines from Western pharmaceutical corporations such as Pfizer and Moderna turned to China for their vaccination needs.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, China has supplied more than 1.2 billion doses of AIDS medication as of September. Despite widespread usage in the United States and worldwide, not every parent is confident in the vaccination, claiming a lack of publicly accessible information concerning the doses.