China may be a world leader in developing vaccines to combat COVID-19, but its rollout of jabs at home is lagging far behind global peers. Mainland authorities are now hoping to kickstart the takeup by citizens with the first national program of free shots for all.

By Sunday, the country’s 1.39 billion people had received about 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, the National Health Commission said on Monday. It announced a new push to get more citizens inoculated against the highly transmissible airborne disease, which has so far claimed about 2.78 million lives worldwide.

While China has approved four domestically developed vaccines — two from state-owned Sinopharm, one from Beijing-based Sinovac and another from Tianjin-based CanSino — and was among the first countries to begin administering vaccines last year, its vaccination coverage has fallen behind countries such as Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Meanwhile, the world’s second-biggest economy has embarked on the so-called vaccine diplomacy, exporting millions of doses of its domestically developed shots to other countries. Turkey — whose vaccination rate is more than triple China’s, according to World Health Organization data  — has been promised at least 100 million jabs.

The commission did not state how many people in the country had received a second dose of vaccine. China’s vaccine production rate and supply levels are also unclear.

The National Health Commission also on Monday published a handbook on vaccine administration technique. It recommends that the public should use the same brand of jabs for COVID-19 vaccinations.

In exceptional circumstances where the same vaccine cannot be used to complete the process, then the same type of treatment produced by other companies can be used as a substitute, the guidebook says.

The commission aimed to inoculate 40% of people by the end of June, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said on Sunday. In order to get there, the country needs to administer about 10 million doses on average every day, according to state media. A daily record of 6.11 million doses was given on March 26, NHC said at the press conference to announce the new drive.

Beijing had given 10 million doses, with more than 3 million people having received two doses, the state-owned Beijing Daily reported on Sunday.

In Shenzhen alone, health authorities have designated at least 453 inoculation centers, while there are at least 296 sites in Guangzhou, the provincial capital of Guangdong.

Starting last week, the Shanghai government has sent its first mobile vaccination bus to provide free jabs.

Click here for Chinese version

---------------------------------

Apple Daily’s all-new English Edition is now available on the mobile app: bit.ly/2yMMfQE

To download the latest version,

iOS: bit.ly/AD_iOS

Android: bit.ly/AD_android

Or search Appledaily in App Store or Google Play