A construction worker for the Beijing Winter Olympic Games venues receives a COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday in the capital city. Beijing has vaccinated more than 5 million residents and 2.64 million have received two doses. Photo: cnsphoto

China had administered 74.956 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines as of Saturday, the National Health Commission (NHC) said on Sunday.

The country's annual production can fully meet the inoculation demand of the whole country under current production arrangements, said Mao Junfeng, an official from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, at a Sunday press conference on the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. 

China has developed five vaccines - three inactivated vaccines, one adenovirus vector vaccine, and one hamster ovary cell vaccine - that have been approved for conditional marketing or emergency use. Chinese vaccine manufacturers are working around the clock to produce more doses using other technical routes, Mao told the press conference. 

He urged vaccine manufacturers to ensure the safe and stable quality of the vaccines amid large-scale production. 

Authorities noted that they will gradually promote vaccination across the country in an orderly manner and enlarge the inoculation coverage of the population, including seniors and minors.

At the Sunday press conference, He Qinghua, another NHC official, said that some regions in China have started to vaccinate people aged 60 and above, based on their health conditions and would expand the coverage after more efficacy and safety data become available.

The expanded vaccination drive has been carried out in townships and villages across China. 

The Global Times learned from authorities in Qindong township in East China's Jiangsu Province on Sunday that the town aims to vaccinate 40 percent of its population, a total of 8,600 residents aged from 18 to 59, by June. 

After that, it will begin vaccinating 7,800 people (over 60) from July to December, and later minors (under 18) from 2022.

Some regions in China, such as Beijing and Hefei in East China's Anhui Province, have already started to vaccinate people over 60 years of age who are in good physical condition, under the premise of a full assessment of their health and the risk of infection.

Chinese authorities reportedly have laid out plans to ramp up efforts to vaccinate 560 million people, or 40 percent of China's population, by the end of June, and another 330 million people by the end of the year, covering 64 percent of the total population. 

At the same press conference, Feng Zijian, deputy director of the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, reminded people who were already vaccinated to keep wearing masks and taking full precautions in public places, as there remains the risk of the transmission of imported viruses and the vaccination rate in China is still relatively low. 

China so far has no plan to exempt inoculated China-bound travelers from nucleic acid testing and quarantine measures, Feng said. The Global Times found that at least 28 Chinese embassies had released measures offering facilitation to visa applicants who have been inoculated with Chinese COVID-19 vaccines.