Beijing: China has fully vaccinated quite one billion people against the coronavirus — 71 percent of its population — official figures showed Thursday.
The country had mostly curbed the virus within its borders but is racing to urge the overwhelming majority of its population vaccinated as a replacement outbreak takes hold within the southeast.
“As of September 15, 2.16 billion vaccine doses are administered nationwide,” said National Health Commission spokesman Mi Feng at a press briefing.
Chinese health authorities said late last month that 890 million people in China had been fully vaccinated and two billion doses administered.
The government has not publicly announced a target for vaccination coverage, but top virologist Zhong Nanshan said last month that the country is probably going to possess 80 percent of its population inoculated by the top of the year.
China is currently battling an epidemic of the Delta variant within the southeastern province of Fujian that has infected almost 200 people thus far in three cities, many of whom are schoolchildren.
The Fujian cluster is that the biggest rebound in weeks and comes after the country declared the Delta variant in check , during a test of China’s “zero-case” approach to the pandemic.
China reported 80 new cases on Thursday, of which 49 were domestic transmissions.