China announced on Monday that it recorded a daily record number of new infections with the emerging coronavirus, which raised questions about the effectiveness of the strict measures taken by the government, which led to anger and people took to the streets in rare demonstrations.
And the National Health Committee said, on Monday, that China had recorded 40,347 new cases of the virus, of which 3,822 were symptomatic and 36,525 were asymptomatic.
China recorded 39,791 new cases of coronavirus the previous day, of which 3,709 were symptomatic and 36,082 were asymptomatic.
And China recorded 38,421 local injuries on Tuesday, which is fewer than the records recorded at the end of the week.
Professor of Chinese Studies at Imperial College London, Kerry Brown, attributes the reasons for China’s record numbers to a number of reasons combined.
“I think the Omicron variant is very contagious, and also because vaccination levels in China are relatively low, with a large proportion of the population aging and at risk,” he said in an interview with Yahoo News.
He added, “The combination of a low vaccination rate and a large number of those at risk in the presence of a rapidly spreading variant, and a modest lifting of restrictions, explains the high infections and the rapid spread of the disease in the past few days.”
And Tuesday, China announced that it will accelerate the vaccination of people aged 60 and over against Covid, after it recorded a record daily death toll in recent days.
The Beijing National Health Commission pledged to “accelerate the increase in the vaccination rate for people over the age of 80 and continue to increase the vaccination rate for adults between 60 and 79 years old,” adding that it would “establish a working group … to make special arrangements for vaccinating the elderly against Covid,” according to the report. What was quoted by the agency “Agence France Presse”.
Low vaccination rates in China, especially among the elderly, have long been considered a reason for the authorities to prolong their “zero Covid” approach, as any small number of epidemic infections is met with closure and quarantine measures.
Officials of the National Health Committee reported in a press conference Tuesday that only 65.8 percent of people over the age of 80 have received full doses of vaccines, noting that China has not yet approved the use of vaccines based on mRNA technology.
Mainland China has so far recorded 311,624 confirmed cases with symptoms, according to Reuters.