CHINA. As the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China reported 50 locally transmitted COVID-19 cases on Saturday, authorities have called for a speeding up of vaccination rates, especially among minors aged 3-11, to help curb the latest outbreaks.
The northern coastal province of Hebei recorded 21 of the new cases, including 18 in Xinji; while six were posted in Heihe, Heilongjiang province.
Encouragingly no new cases have been reported in the two Chinese travel retail hotspots of Macau and Hainan since 8 October and 5 August, respectively.
State media Global Times reported that medical experts are urging an accelerated roll-out of vaccination and booster shots to drive herd immunity in the face of upcoming winter weather than the highly infectious Delta variant.
Between 17 October and 5 November, 918 local cases have been reported, affecting 44 cities in 20 provinces, the National Health Commission said. While those numbers pale into insignificance compared to many countries (Russia posted 41,355 new cases yesterday according to Worldometer, the US 32,479 and the UK 30,539), the Chinese authorities are working hard to eliminate the spread.
Reporting on a press conference in Beijing on Saturday, Global Times quoted Wang Qinghua, Chief Immunologist of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, who told reporters: “We used to think of COVID-19 as having low incidence in children, but as the pandemic has spread globally, we have seen increased infections in children, with the rates of severe illness and mortality surpassing influenza in some countries… and the hospitalisation rate for children is now more than ten times higher than earlier this year.”
Wu Liangyou, the Deputy Director from the National Health Commission Disease Control Bureau, told a press conference on Saturday that the country’s ‘dynamic zero COVID’ policy on pandemic prevention and control remained appropriate.
China will maintain its strict pandemic prevention and control measures in order to prevent imported infections and contain domestic resurgence, given repeated outbreaks in neighbouring countries and across the globe, Wu noted.
