Shenzhen has started offering a second COVID-19 booster shot to citizens who had received their first booster shot more than half a year ago to strengthen immunity.
Eligible vaccine recipients can make online reservations via the WeChat accounts “深圳卫健委” (szwjwwx), “深圳疾控” (szcdcepi), “健康深圳” (jkshenzhen), or the WeChat miniprogram “社康通” (shekangtong).
Residents have the option to get inactivated vaccines, adenovirus-vectored vaccines and recombinant protein vaccines.
In a field visit to the Qiaoxiang Community Health Service Center in Futian District yesterday, quite a number of citizens, including the elderly and children, were seen queuing up to get a vaccine dose.
“A majority of the vaccine recipients here today are getting their second booster shots,” Li Jianwei, a medical worker at the health service center, told Shenzhen Daily.
About 93% of the vaccine recipients were inoculated with the recombinant protein vaccine developed by Anhui Zhifei Longcom Biopharmaceutical Co., while the rest received inactivated vaccines, according to Li.
The newly introduced recombinant fusion protein vaccine developed by Livzon Mabpharm Inc. is also available in some of the city’s vaccination sites.
China is offering a second COVID-19 booster shot to certain groups, including people with a high risk of infection, people aged over 60, people with serious underlying health conditions and those who are immunocoproimised, according to a circular released by national authorities Dec. 13.
All vaccines approved for conditional marketing or emergency use can be used as a second booster dose, according to the document.
It added that sequential booster immunization, a vaccination strategy that uses different types of vaccines for booster inoculations, or omicron-resistant vaccines, are preferred in choosing second booster doses.
Some health experts in the country have also warned that the Omicron variant is expected to cause a new wave of infections in two to three months.