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Epidemic Response | Zhengzhou CDC Releases Advice that Eligible Elderly Persons Be Vaccinated ASAP

On March 8, the Zhengzhou Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Zhengzhou CDC) sent a prompt to citizens that China's latest COVID-19 epidemic is highly concentrated in local areas and spreading in many places. To deal with the situation, as of 24:00 on March 7, Zhengzhou had administered a total of 28,056,400 doses of COVID-19 vaccines, of which 1,276,500 first doses had been administered to elderly persons above 60 years old, with a vaccination rate of 78.91%. It is recommended that eligible elderly persons should be vaccinated as soon as possible.

There is still much room for improvement of the COVID-19 vaccination rate for the elderly.

Since old people are physically weak and many of them have a variety of chronic underlying diseases, their infection with the virus will lead to more severe symptoms than those of young people.  Li Feng, Director of the Institute of Immunization Programme at Zhengzhou CDC, said, "According to the data, lowered rates of hospitalization, serious illnesses and mortality are observed in people who have received COVID-19 vaccines. Thus, we recommend that eligible elderly people be vaccinated as soon as possible. Since each person's physical condition is different, old people can consult the vaccination clinics in their communities for detailed information before the vaccination."

Zhengzhou is now rolling out sequential COVID-19 booster vaccinations, people's acceptance of which has been gradually improved.

This strategy was officially launched in late February, which offered Zhengzhou citizens another option when they received a booster shot of COVID-19 vaccine.

The research shows no difference in safety between sequential booster vaccination and homologous booster vaccination, Li Feng added.  At present, COVID-19 booster vaccinations are implemented in Zhengzhou in order and the vaccine supply is sufficient. Thus, Zhengzhou citizens are advised to receive a booster shot or a sequential vaccination as soon as possible six months after initial inoculation.

Copyright by Zhengzhou Municipal Tourism Administration