(Yicai Global) March 2 -- China plans to have 40 percent of its 1.4 billion people vaccinated against the novel coronavirus by June in order to achieve herd immunity and allow people to get on with their daily lives and the economy to recover, the China Youth Daily reported today, citing the head of the National Health Commission’s Covid-19 team.

Herd immunity should be achieved through inoculation, and not by letting the disease infect a large number of people, top pulmonologist Zhong Nanshan said at a forum on US-China collaborations on Covid-19 prevention and treatment measures organized by the Washington-based Brookings Institution and Tsinghua University in Beijing.

China has only vaccinated 3.56 percent of its population to date, far behind Israel’s 90 percent and the United Arab Emirates’ 60 percent, but in terms of numbers of people, it is second only to the US, Zhang said.

The country has 60 different vaccine candidates in the running, six of which have entered final Phase III clinical trials, he added.

After six consecutive weeks of decline worldwide, the number of new novel coronavirus infections rose last week, Tedros Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, said yesterday.

Editor: Kim Taylor