No sitting back on vaccine news: China Daily editorial

No New Year's Day gift in China will have been better than the news that mass immunization is underway.

With the first domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine conditionally approved for general use, we are no doubt a step closer toward a successful finale in the costly battle against the novel coronavirus.

As mass inoculation programs were launched free of charge in multiple Western nations, questions had arisen here: How are our vaccines proceeding? When will they be available? Will they be effective? Will they be safe? Will they be free for every one?

Most, if not all, of these questions got an answer on the very last day of 2020 when a vaccine developed by China National Biotec Group, a subsidiary of Sinopharm, was given the green light as being effective and safe for public use by China's National Medical Products Administration.

The green light came a day after the company announced that preliminary data from last-stage trials had shown it to be 79.34 percent effective. That is much higher than the 50 percent World Health Organization threshold for inactivated vaccines.

And it is believed to be particularly suitable for large-scale use in developing countries as it does not need storing at extremely low temperatures, which is the case with the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines that have been snapped up by developed countries. Also it is a lot more affordable than those two.

Under a nationwide inoculation plan, nine high-risk groups of people are to receive the vaccine by Spring Festival, which falls on Feb 12. Vaccination for others will begin after the festival.

The step-by-step approach is based on the priorities identified in pandemic containment — controlling sources of infection, cutting off channels of transmission, and protecting vulnerable groups.

Since the sources of the most recent rebounds of the virus in Beijing and the northeastern provinces of Liaoning and Heilongjiang have mostly been traced back to imported cases, it is sensible to focus on customs, transport and medical workers.

However, while the news is undoubtedly a shot in the arm for our pandemic-hit economy and everyday life, no matter how efficient the vaccine is, its availability does not mean automatic protection. It will take time for the vaccine to establish immunity in the general public. And the country will soon face the test of the biggest travel rush of the year around the Spring Festival holiday.

Since most of the public do not belong to the nine identified groups, the coming lunar New Year travel peak will be a tremendous challenge for the country's pandemic containment endeavors.

So it is still far too early to put to rest our vigilance and the pandemic-response mechanisms developed over the past year. We must not let the news take our eyes off the ball.