A medical worker checks vaccine information at a COVID-19 vaccination site of Jingcheng Hospital in Ruili City, southwest China's Yunnan Province, April 1, 2021.Photo:Xinhua

Ruili in Southwest China's Yunnan Province, a border city where the latest COVID-19 flare-up in China has occurred, opened vaccination registration for residents to build herd immunity as soon as possible amid the epidemic, the Yunnan government announced Sunday.

In order to build herd immunity and protect people amid the epidemic, the Yunnan provincial authorities have urgently deployed a batch of vaccines to Ruili while 25 vaccination sites have been set up, the Yunnan government said on its official WeChat account. 

Currently, Ruili residents can only register on their mobile phones for an appointment at one of the 25 vaccination sites. Mobile phone registration services for the other sites will be available soon, the Ruili government said. 

Ruili has reported 36 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 51 asymptomatic cases as of Saturday, according to Yunnan's provincial health authority. 

The city launched a citywide vaccination drive on Thursday and vowed to vaccinate all people qualified for vaccination among its 300,000 residents before Tuesday.

A total of 159,000 doses of vaccines have been urgently deployed for Ruili and 66,000 arrived in the city on Thursday night, according to media reports. 

On Friday, 150,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines developed by Tianjin-based bio company CanSinoBIO had arrived in Kunming, capital of Yunnan, the company said in a statement it sent to the Global Times on Sunday.

The vaccine, Ad5-nCoV, was jointly developed by CanSinoBIO and a team led by military infectious disease expert Chen Wei from the Institute of Biotechnology under the Academy of Military Medical Sciences. 

It is the only single-dose COVID-19 vaccine that has been approved for market in China. It shows a 68.83 percent efficacy against all COVID-19 symptoms 14 days after vaccination, read the company's statement.

The vaccine can be used on all groups of people aged above 18. It was tested on more than 40,000 volunteers during Phase III of the clinical trials in five countries, including Pakistan, Russia, and Mexico. No serious side effects related to the vaccine have been reported, the company noted in the statement.  

It requires the vaccination of at least 60-70 percent of residents in one area to achieve herd immunity. Single-dose vaccines can help accelerate the process, experts explained. 

Gene sequencing showed that the virus in Ruili's cases is highly homologous and very similar to the sequence previously reported by Myanmar. It is suspected to have been imported from Myanmar via people or goods. The virus is unrelated to previous outbreaks in other cities in China, indicating it is not a local subsequent epidemic, local authorities said at a news conference on Saturday.