There are few takers because almost all of the city’s working-age residents have been vaccinated, but across the country and in Shenzhen, it is the elderly who are the main holdouts. Unlike most of China’s coronavirus prevention measures, vaccination is not mandatory, and low uptake among the country’s most vulnerable groups is a major reason Communist Party leaders feel compelled to persist with a grueling “zero covid” approach.
As the costs of lockdown in China have mounted, the need to vaccinate the entire population has become paramount. Shanghai has suffered staggeringly over the past month, with residents trapped by a strict lockdown unable to reach hospitals and suffering psychological breakdowns after weeks-long home confinement with an unknown end date. Supply chains worldwide have been upended.
Despite the mounting criticism, China’s top leaders declared on Thursday that there would be no let-up on the zero-covid policy and that they would fight any attempts to question the approach. The committee, led by President Xi Jinping, said the relaxation of controls now would lead to “massive numbers of infections” and deaths.
They only need to look next door to Hong Kong, where the omicron outbreak this year tore through the high numbers of unvaccinated elderly people and resulted in one of the highest fatality rates in the world.
The head epidemiologist of the national covid response team, Liang Wannian, said last week that vaccination rates among the elderly and children were not high enough, and “if we choose the so-called policy of coexisting with the virus, medical resources would be very likely be overwhelmed.”
But outside the flare-up zones, it’s easy to see why older residents might be reluctant to get vaccinated. In places like Shenzhen, city life bustles as normal, except that pedestrians have to show proof of a negative coronavirus test within the past 72 hours to enter any public spaces.
The vaccination drive has been mild compared to some of the other pandemic-control measures and did not prioritize the elderly. Some younger people have been required to get vaccinated for their jobs, but vaccination of retirees remains optional. Incentives like eggs, grains and other foodstuffs — a staple of China’s vaccination drive since last year — are now being bolstered by home checkups, mobile clinics and the widespread mobilization of public servants to ensure the elderly get shots.
“My neighborhood authorities arranged it,” Yuan Zhen, a woman in her 70s, said of her three shots of the Sinopharm vaccine. People over 60 are the least vaccinated group in her neighborhood, Shenzhen’s Shenshan district, and officials recently ordered nurses to make the rounds on a green bus to try to vaccinate more retirees.
Only 56 percent of residents over 60 have at least one shot in Shenshan, far below the numbers for all other age groups. Vaccines weren’t even available for the elderly in Shenzhen until June 2021, after 88 percent of residents between the ages of 18 and 59 had received at least one shot.
On a recent afternoon, a recording played outside the Shenzhen public library, asking unvaccinated readers to get a shot around the corner before entering. Few were interested, however, even with the offers of free rice and shampoo.
Civil servants — including in some instances professionals like teachers with no public health role — are under pressure to track down and persuade elderly people to get vaccinated, sometimes being allotted a quota of households. Failure to do so could mean losing out on annual bonuses or hurting chances of promotion.