Tibet administers over 8 million COVID-19 vaccine doses

LHASA -- Southwest China's Tibet autonomous region has administered 8.07 million COVID-19 vaccine doses, compared with its population of 3.65 million, local authorities said Thursday.

By Wednesday, 3.52 million people had received their first shots, while 3.33 million people had gotten second shots, the region's health commission told Xinhua.

The region is also following the rest of the country closely in administering booster shots, and has already completed 1.22 million third jabs, said the commission.

The commission added that some 95 percent of those aged 3 and above have received their second shots so far.

Widespread vaccination has provided a strong guarantee for "forming a barrier of high-quality herd immunity and ensuring people's health and safety," the commission said.

By the end of Wednesday, Tibet had gone 714 days without reporting any new confirmed or suspected cases, the commission said in a daily update on COVID-19.

The region reported a confirmed case at the end of January 2020, the first and so far only case found in Tibet.

This year, Tibet will continue to expand the coverage of vaccination to realize high-quality herd immunity "at the earliest possible date," the commission said.

In the face of resurgences of locally transmitted cases around the country, Tibet has notably ratcheted up its control measures. A negative nucleic acid test result is routinely required for entry into the region from other provincial-level regions.

Public venues in the regional capital Lhasa require not only masks and temperature checks, but also the scanning of a quick-response code to enable the accurate and rapid tracking of visitors.

The national tally showed 124 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases were reported Wednesday on the Chinese mainland. Nearly 2.92 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses had been administered on the mainland by Wednesday, according to the National Health Commission.