Beijing city offers elderly COVID shot-related health insurance to ease hesitancy

Persons go by a poster encouraging elderly folks to get vaccinated from the coronavirus illness (COVID-19), in the vicinity of a household compound in Beijing, China March 30, 2022. REUTERS/Tingshu Wang

BEIJING, May possibly 27 (Reuters) – China’s cash is offering aged inhabitants point out-backed insurance plan for “medical incidents” linked to COVID-19 pictures to relieve vaccination hesitancy amongst those people most vulnerable, as Beijing ramps up inoculations throughout its worst outbreak.

Chinese officers have pointed to rather reduced vaccination costs between the aged as a important weak spot in its “dynamic zero-COVID” approach.

The metropolis of 22 million people today had thoroughly inoculated 97.7% of its adult people as of September previous calendar year, but only 80.6% of people aged 60 and in excess of experienced received their very first dose by mid-April this calendar year, according to city officers.

The new coverage program, with rates protected by the authorities, aims to “alleviate concerns around vaccination between the elderly team and their household associates”, condition tv claimed late on Thursday, citing details from the Beijing place of work of China’s banking and coverage regulator.

The insurance policy policy payout could be as large as 500,000 yuan ($74,200) for every individual for a solitary gain, according to the report, which didn’t supply certain particulars of the plan.

Somewhere else, numerous districts in the northern town of Tianjin, also battling a fresh Omicron cluster, have pledged to “strictly restrict” entry into venues these types of as stadiums for unvaccinated senior citizens who really don’t have health-related problems that render vaccination unsuitable.

($1 = 6.7380 Chinese yuan renminbi)

Reporting by Roxanne Liu and Ryan Woo Modifying by Kenneth Maxwell

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