China trying to ‘hold back tide’ of COVID outbreak – as half of over 80s unvaccinated
Professor Dale Fisher, chair of the WHO’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, has spoken to Sky News about growing numbers of COVID cases in China.
As we reported earlier, Beijing will now conduct mass testing of most of its 21 million people – after initially starting with one district.
A new COVID outbreak in the city has sparked stockpiling of food by residents worried about the possibility of a Shanghai-style lockdown.
Speaking of the situation, Mr Fisher said China is having to “hold back” the latest tide of COVID infections to try and “buy more time” for people to get vaccinated.
However, he said there is significant vaccine hesitancy in elderly populations, with 47% of people over the age of 80 unvaccinated.
Mr Fisher added: “The problem in China at the moment is that they’re having to hold back this tide to buy more time. We’ve seen it in the UK and all countries really where we’ve been holding off until the vaccine rates are strong enough for it to be able to not have too much carnage.”
He said that although vaccine rates in China are “quite high”, there is some reluctance among older generations.
“The figures I saw last month was about 53% of people over 80 had actually had the vaccine so you can imagine if you allowed endemicity to run with those sort of unvaccinated people then there would be a lot of severe disease, overwhelmed hospitals and all the things we’ve seen before.
“I think they’re trying to buy some time in a very difficult situation.”
