China tops 1 billion full vaccination target
But the highly transmissible Delta variant is still challenging the country’s target to build herd immunity
China's National Health Commission on Thursday announced that the country has fully vaccinated 1 billion of its citizens against Covid-19.
But the highly transmissible Delta variant is still challenging the country's target to build herd immunity, reports the South China Morning Post.
More than 2.16 billion doses had been administered and 1 billion people fully inoculated by Wednesday, Lei Zhenglong, National Health Commission disease prevention chief, said on Thursday.
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That total included 170 million doses given to 95 million teenagers and 390 million doses taken by 200 million people aged over 60.
"We rank the top in the world in terms of total number of doses and number of people covered, and have one of the highest vaccination rates," Lei said.
According to Our World in Data, 54% of the US population, 30.7% of people in the European Union, 13.5% of India's population have been fully vaccinated. Malta tops the world with 82.9% of its 500,000 or so people fully vaccinated.
Meanwhile, in Beijing 20.3 million people have had at least one dose, with 19.5 million fully inoculated. More than 97.4% of the adult population, or 89% of the total population, of the Chinese capital has completed a full regimen, according to Beijing's health commission.
The figures mean that 72% of China's 1.4 billion people are fully vaccinated, reaching a target originally set when China started the national vaccination campaign in December.
