China’s top respiratory disease expert Zhong Nanshan on Friday said the country could reach herd immunity against Covid-19 by the end of the year if more than 80 per cent of the population is fully vaccinated.
He said while Covid-19 vaccines, including Chinese ones, were less effective six months after the first dose, herd immunity was still achievable with booster shots.
“[At this stage] we believe a booster shot could strengthen the efficacy of the vaccines and we estimate more than 80 per cent of the population will be vaccinated by the end of this year. Therefore we hope that we will be able to achieve herd immunity [by then],” Zhong told a China-Arab states conference in the Ningxia Hui region via video link.
The latest data also indicated that the antibody levels increase by more than 10 times after the third dose vaccination following a 6-month-gap from the second dose of China-developed inactivated vaccines, he said.
Citing a paper published on Lancet, Zhong said the efficacy of Sinovac's COVID-19 vaccine in Turkey reached 83.5 percent without any report of serious adverse reaction or death, demonstrating the effective protection and safety offered by Sinovac vaccines.
