According to one of China’s top health authorities, despite its vaccination program, China is still unable to open its borders.
Opening the borders, according to Feng Zijian, the deputy director general of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, would still pose the risk of a catastrophic COVID-19 outbreak even if 60-80 percent of people were fully vaccinated. Because there is no way to confirm if Chinese COVID-19 vaccines can prevent more transmission as well as serious illness in China’s predominantly COVID-free population.
As many countries in the world have shown, messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, like those developed by BioNTech SE, Pfizer Inc., and Moderna Inc., seem can prevent the onward transmission.
Li Yunchun, CEO of Chinese pharmaceutical firm Walvax Biotechnology Co., said that the firm is working on its own mRNA vaccine.
As of June 9, China had administered almost 800 million vaccination doses. However, how many of these are first and second dosages is unknown.
As the COVID-19 pandemic worsened overseas in the early part of 2020, China closed its borders to almost all foreigners at midnight on March 28, 2020. Anyone entering the Chinese mainland from overseas must still undergo strict measures of centralized quarantine and testing. Most places in the mainland require 21 days of centralized quarantine.
Clearly, there is still a long way to go on the road back to normality.
