Not everyone in China will need to get vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the country's top medical official, as Beijing looks to prioritize front-line workers and high-risk populations in a move that underscores rising confidence among policy-makers of their ability to contain the virus.
"Since the first wave of COVID-19 appeared in Wuhan, China has already survived the impact of COVID-19 several times," Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention , said at a vaccine summit in the city of Shenzhen on Saturday, according to state-run news agency China News Service.
China's reported virus numbers have stayed low since the spring. There have been a few flare-ups -- clusters in the northeastern Jilin province in May, an outbreak in Beijing in June, and another in the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi in July -- but these were met with immediate lockdown measures and mass testing, and the outbreaks were contained within a few weeks.
On Saturday, China's National Health Commission only recorded 10 new symptomatic confirmed cases, all imported from overseas. It also reported 70 new asymptomatic cases, which are counted separately, also all imported.Despite Gao's comments, China has been one of the biggest players in the global race to develop a coronavirus vaccine.
Just last week, the University of Hong Kong announced that clinical trials have been approved for a nasal spray vaccine, developed in collaboration with mainland Chinese researchers. Gao himself was injected with an experimental vaccine in July, in a move that was "intended to enhance the public's confidence in vaccines," according to state-run tabloid Global Times.
But Gao warned on Saturday that vaccine development is still a work in progress, with risks of poor side-effects.
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