East China residents motivated for COVID-19 vaccination as new cases emerge

HEFEI, May 16 (Xinhua) -- Residents in east China's Anhui Province have been motivated to get their COVID-19 vaccines after five new locally transmitted cases emerged there recently.

Bracing wind and rain, long lines were spotted waiting outside various vaccination sites in Hefei City, capital of the province, on Saturday. Hefei reported two COVID-19 cases, while the province's Lu'an City reported three in the recent sporadic resurgence of COVID-19 cases by Saturday.

None of the five patients in the resurgence in Anhui received the COVID-19 vaccine, local authorities said.

By Sunday noon, the province reported two new confirmed locally transmitted COVID-19 cases, both in Lu'an.

"It's responsible for both ourselves and the society to get vaccinated. That's the least I can do to help contain the resurgence of the virus," said Guo Lingling, who was queuing to get inoculated at a local community health center in Hefei.

More than 2.64 million COVID-19 vaccine doses had been administered in Hefei as of Friday. A record daily high of 364,100 doses was given on Friday alone, more than doubling the number of the previous day, the city's health commission said.

Medical staff and resources from other parts of the province have been mobilized to the capital city to meet people's enthusiasm to get vaccinated. A huge stadium in Hefei was also converted into a vaccination site.

The municipal government decided on Saturday that vaccination shall be prioritized for frontline workers.

"Vaccination is a great way to achieve herd immunity. The vaccination rate in China is still low and behind many countries. So we need to step up efforts to raise our vaccination rate to 70 to 80 percent as soon as possible," Zhong Nanshan, a renowned Chinese respiratory disease expert, said after he received a dose of a China-developed COVID-19 vaccine recently in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province.

"I hope, together, we can do what we can to help stem the pandemic for our country, the world, and ourselves," Zhong added.

Nearly 393 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered across China as of Saturday, the National Health Commission said Sunday.