CPC leaders including Xi given local COVID vaccine shots: Official

Beijing [China], July 24 (ANI): Chinese President Xi Jinping and other Communist Party of China (CPC) leaders have been vaccinated with domestically produced COVID-19 vaccines to bring people's confidence in the domestic vaccines, according to local media.
Zeng Yixin, deputy director of the Chinese National Health Commission on Saturday said the party and state leaders usually refer to leaders who hold national or vice-national administrative rank in the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese state, including 25 members of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, Global Times reported.
This comes after reports of low vaccination rates among the elderly group especially those aged 80 and above.
As of Friday, a total of 3.4 billion shots of the COVID-19 vaccine had been administered in the Chinese mainland, according to data cited by Global Times.
According to Feng, as of May 30, a total of 238,215 side effect cases following vaccination had been reported, equal to an incidence rate of 70.45 per one million shots.
Recently, China enforced a lockdown in Xian, home to 13 million people after the city reported the first cases of a new Omicron subvariant. The lockdown was implemented after Xian reported 18 COVID-19 infections from Saturday to Monday, all of which are of the Omicron BA.5.2 subvariant, according to local disease control officials.
BA.5.2 is a sub-lineage of BA.5, which is already dominant in the US and appears to escape antibody responses among both people previously infected with COVID-19 and those who have been fully vaccinated and boosted, according to researchers.
It is the first time the subvariant has been reported in China, one of the last places in the world still adhering to a stringent zero-Covid policy.
Due to the latest outbreak in Beijing, millions of people are facing mandatory testing and thousands are under targeted lockdowns, just days after the city started to lift widespread curbs that had run for more than a month to tackle a broader outbreak since late April.
China has incurred severe effects on the livelihoods of its inhabitants in the first half of 2022 as a result of rigorous lockdowns and demanding testing procedures in different parts of the nation.
The economic impact of the zero-COVID strategy has also dented income. Fiscal revenue fell 4.8 per cent on the year for the four months through April, according to the Finance Ministry, owing mainly to tax refunds aimed at supporting businesses. (ANI)