Vaccines effective at reducing severe illness, death, says head of China's CDC

COVID-19 vaccines have a remarkable effect on preventing severe illness and death, said George F. Gao, head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Gao said everyone should have confidence in vaccines as they provide basic immunization after two shots, and are able to alleviate the burden of disease.

That is to say, vaccines seem a little bit weaker in preventing infection and disease since it's hard to prevent circulation (of the virus). But in preventing severe cases and death, vaccines have an obvious effect, said Gao at a parallel forum during the ongoing 2021 Zhongguancun Forum on Saturday.

Yin Zundong, director of the National Immunization Program at China CDC, said China has 10 COVID-19 vaccine products that have entered phase-III clinical trials overseas.

He emphasized that the factors they took into consideration in formulating vaccine immunization strategies included the target population's risk of illness, the preventive effect of the COVID-19 vaccine, safety, and speed of completing the target population's vaccination.

"For the next step, we'll continue to complete the inoculation of unvaccinated people and conduct further research for the vaccination of young people and boost their immunization," he said at the Saturday's forum.