Mainland heading toward 80pc jab rate and fully open borders

The mainland can completely open its borders when the vaccination rate reaches at least 80 percent by the end of the year, says China's top respiratory expert Zhong Nanshan.

When the rate exceeds 80 percent, Zhong said, it will effectively prevent Covid [from spreading], and especially prevent severe illness, and most infected patients would have no symptoms or just suffer mild symptoms.

In an interview with mainland media, Zhong said China could only fully reopen its borders after "80 percent or 85 percent" of its 1.4 billion population have been vaccinated.

He said he expects the rate to reach 80 percent by year-end.

"After the massive vaccination, it will become a new normal that most people infected with the virus can recover from the illness, instead of the current situation where two out of 100 patients will die," Zhong said.

"When the vaccination rate goes up, the mortality rate will decrease and China can open its borders completely then."

Zhong said Covid is a world disease that requires China and the world to overcome together.

"Adopting the strictest anti-epidemic measures in the long run will not work and it will cause a huge burden on China," he said.

As of September 18, more than 1.1 billion mainlanders have received at least one vaccine dose, mainland authorities said, taking the rate to 78 percent.

Zhong said China has been using strong measures to prevent the virus from spreading since the outbreak started in Wuhan in December 2019.

China has only recorded 20,000 to 30,000 cases in the past 21 months - far less than other countries, some of which have seen 100,000 or even 200,000 new cases in one day, he said.

"China has been on the right path in combating the pandemic in the past two years," Zhong said.

"We are still discussing what we should do as the coronavirus continues to mutate, but the overall principle is focusing on virus prevention. This is unchanged," he added.

Zhong said specific technologies used to fight the virus will keep changing as there because of the mutations.

He said some countries, especially the United States, have politicized the tracing of the origins of the virus, even if the World Health Organization had already conducted investigations in China.

"[These countries] claim the virus was leaked [from laboratories] or manufactured by some countries," he said.

Zhong said China is determined to find the origin of the virus, but it cannot cooperate with countries that politicize the issue.