Vaccines free, safe and effective: China Daily editorial

The official announcement over the weekend that COVID-19 vaccines will be provided to the general public free of charge should have come as no surprise, given that the government has vowed repeatedly to make them a public good once they become available. The central leadership views the move as vital for building a strong line of defense against the novel coronavirus, and part of China's contribution to the global pandemic fight.

Yet due to the lack of publicity, as well as the failure of some local government officials to carry out the policy properly by charging recipients for the vaccines before they were asked to rectify the practice, there has been some confusion among the public about the vaccination program that the government is carrying out.

Since vaccines remain the most effective way to protect people from the disease, it is important to make sure that people throughout the country are willing to be inoculated, by ensuring they are well informed of the no-cost policy and the fact that the vaccines being provided by the government have proved both safe and effective. China has already administered more than 9 million COVID-19 vaccine doses, more than 7 million of them after mid-December, with only two people in a million suffering an adverse reaction.

The promise that people "won't have to pay a single cent" for vaccination against the virus was not an easy one for the country to make, as there are huge costs incurred in every step of the process — from manufacturing and storage to transport and inoculation. Sinopharm, which was the first of the country's vaccine producers to have a COVID-19 vaccine approved, has reportedly said that its two-shot vaccine costs nearly 1,000 yuan ($149).

With all the costs to be covered by the medical insurance fund and government budget as part of a whole-of-nation fight against the epidemic, the government's free-of-charge vaccine policy not only reflects the governance principle of "putting people first" but also underscores its determination to keep the virus at bay at all costs.

Yet to do that, as well as vaccinate people for free, it is equally consequential that a good inoculation scheme — covering such areas as medical workers' training, vaccine recipient screening, adverse reaction monitoring, and emergency treatment — is drafted and put in place so that everyone has confidence in the vaccines and can benefit from the policy.

The experience accumulated so far should light the way for the vaccination campaign to speed up across the nation in the coming months.