Higher vaccination rate in seniors vital to beating pandemic: expert

Imaginechina

A higher vaccination rate among senior citizens and sufficient medical resources to treat them are key factors to getting over the COVID-19 pandemic, Shanghai's top coronavirus expert said Thursday.

Whether a nation can get rid of the Omicron pandemic depends on the case fatality rate (CFR) among the elderly and other vulnerable groups with underlying diseases, said Dr Zhang Wenhong, head of Shanghai's COVID-19 treatment team and director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases.

Shanghai must further enhance the vaccination rate, especially among seniors and people with underlying diseases, because almost all those who are infected and have severe symptoms in the city are unvaccinated, Zhang said in an online speech at the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2022.

"People's trust in the COVID-19 vaccines should be further enhanced after Shanghai's COVID-19 resurgence, the most severe coronavirus pandemic in China since the outbreak in 2020," said Zhang.

He said people might have hesitated to take the jab during the past two years due to effective prevention efforts and a low risk of infection in China.

However sufficient medical resources to cover all senior ages and those with severe underlying diseases could largely guarantee their survival during the pandemic, he added.

Shanghai has reported over 430,000 COVID-19 cases and a death toll of 36 people since the resurgence in March.

Zhang noted 90 percent of the deaths were of people aged over 75 years and almost all had severe underlying diseases.