Get vaxxed or stay home, some local Chinese governments say

Several local governments in China are planning to bar residents who haven’t been vaccinated against Covid-19 from accessing public venues, reported the Wall Street Journal.

In recent days, a dozen counties and cities in the eastern provinces of Zhejiang, Fujian and Jiangxi set late-August deadlines for people 18 years or older to complete a two-shot vaccine regimen, according to similarly worded online statements. Many of them also set dates in late July by which unvaccinated people would be barred from entering schools, libraries, prisons, nursing homes and inpatient facilities at hospitals without a valid medical exemption. 

Some of the localities attributed their new policies to “national, provincial and municipal arrangements.”

Chinese authorities have fully vaccinated more than 40% of the country’s 1.4 billion people, putting its vaccination rate nearly on par with that of the US, which has fully vaccinated roughly 48% of its population.