Litchi News Beijing Work Department Reporter / Kou Cheng
On the afternoon of April 1, the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council held a press conference to introduce the situation of strictly and earnestly grasping the prevention and control of the epidemic. Wang Huaqing, chief expert of the immunization program of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said that the benefits of vaccination far outweigh the risks, and for now, vaccination against the new crown virus is the best measure to prevent severe illness and death after infection.
As of March 31, the country has reported a total of 3,270,874,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine, the total number of vaccinated people has reached 1,277.709 million, and 1,242,281,000 people have been vaccinated, covering 90.63% of the country's total population, and the number of people vaccinated throughout the country accounts for 88.11% of the total population.
Wang Huaqing introduced that whether it is an individual or a group, after vaccination, the benefits are far higher than the risks. Benefits refer to being able to prevent disease, including infection prevention, morbidity prevention, severe illness prevention, and death prevention. The risk mainly refers to adverse reactions at the time of vaccination, and serious adverse reactions to all vaccines currently applied are very rare.
He specifically mentioned that according to the information recently provided by the Centre for Health Protection of the Hong Kong Regional Department of Health on March 29, the case fatality rate after infection is 0.1% among the whole population who are fully vaccinated, that is, at least 2 doses of vaccine, while the case fatality rate after infection with the new crown virus is 1.91% after the whole population without vaccination or 1 dose of vaccination is 1.91%, a difference of nearly 20 times between the two.
For people with chronic underlying diseases, especially the elderly, the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine in preventing severe illness and death is still very significant. Wang Huaqing suggested that as long as there are no contraindications for the elderly over 60 years old and are not the object of slow planting, they should be vaccinated as soon as possible and vaccinated according to the prescribed time interval.
Regarding whether elderly people with chronic diseases who are taking medication can be vaccinated, Wang Huaqing said that taking drugs usually does not affect the vaccination of the new crown virus. He stressed that the elderly, especially those with chronic underlying diseases, are infected with the new crown virus, and the risk of severe illness and death is still very high, including common heart disease, COPD, diabetes, cancer, etc., these people are often taking drugs.
Finally, Wang Huaqing also emphasized two points: first, people with chronic underlying diseases and people who are taking drugs, if they are in the acute onset of chronic diseases, it is still recommended to delay the vaccination; second, the elderly or family members with chronic diseases must objectively and rationally understand the benefits of vaccination and the risks it produces when vaccinating.