BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s capital Beijing has fully vaccinated nearly 91% of its adult residents against COVID-19, data from the municipal government showed, as the country expands its nationwide vaccination efforts.
Some 17.7 million people, or 90.8% of adult residents in Beijing, had been inoculated as of July 21, city authorities said on Thursday via social media. That accounts for roughly 80.8% of its total population of 21.9 million.
Full vaccinations of adults in other large Chinese cities have also made significant headway, with Shanghai and Wuhan exceeding rates of 80% and 77% respectively, local authorities said.
China said on Thursday it has administered 1.49 billion doses of COVID-19 shots as of July 21 but it does not disclose nationwide data on how many people have been fully vaccinated.
The vaccination pace in China slowed to about 11.8 million doses per day on average in July, compared with an average of nearly 20 million in June, while vaccination rates in some provinces lagged behind those seen in major cities.
The northern province of Shanxi said 46.7% of its adults have received two doses as of July 20 while the full inoculation rate for adults in the eastern Zhejiang was 49.8% by July 19.
China is expected to vaccinate at least 70% of target groups by the end of this year, Zeng Yixin, vice head of the National Health Commission, told the official Xinhua news agency last month, without giving details of the groups.
Shanxi said it aims to reach at least a 91.2% vaccination rate for those aged above 12 in the second half of this year, without specifying whether the target is for a full vaccination rate or not.
(Reporting by Roxanne Liu and Ryan Woo; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
