A health department in a district of Chengdu, Sichuan province, has been conducting surveys to understand whether local residents are willing to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, thepaper.cn reported on Thursday.

Rong Xiao, a middle-aged public servant in the city's Jinniu district, received a questionnaire recently asking whether the recipient would like to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Because she did not know if the vaccine was safe, Rong hesitated and missed the deadline for answering the questionnaire and making an appointment to be inoculated before Oct 14.

"The questionnaire was from the district health bureau and did not specify when vaccinations would be given," she said, adding that a friend told her that a few parents of schoolchildren in the district had also received questionnaires.

"Like me, they were hesitant because they were not sure about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine," Rong said.

According to Hu Rong, an employee with the district health bureau, the COVID-19 vaccine was yet to arrive at the district and the questionnaire was only aimed at having a general idea of how many people wanted to be vaccinated.

"I do not know when the district will have the vaccine," Hu said. "But it is certain that only those people who work in Customs and hotels where people are quarantined, and those who will travel abroad, will be vaccinated first. Vaccinations will be given to the general public only after all the above-mentioned people are finished."

All the students in the district's schools received the questionnaire asking whether they would like to be inoculated.

"The deadline for that questionnaire was also Oct 14," Hu said.

She did not know when students willing to be vaccinated could get it done.

Sichuan was not the only province considering COVID-19 vaccinations.

On Oct 16, a news conference on controlling the pandemic hosted by the government information office of Zhejiang province said that the province was seriously considering vaccinations.

The emergency use of the COVID-19 vaccine, which is now in the final phase of testing, is being carried out or will be launched in cities in Zhejiang, including Yiwu, Ningbo, and Jiaxing.

Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said the current chance of infection for members of the public in China is very small.
"They do not belong to the vaccine priority group," he said.

Priority for vaccination should be given to front-line workers helping to prevent the coronavirus from reentering China, including those working in Customs, at border crossings or in medical and epidemic prevention departments, he said, adding that those who may have higher mortality rates if infected with COVID-19, such as the elderly and those with underlying diseases, should also be considered.

"If these two populations can be protected, the vaccine can basically meet our expectations for epidemic control," he said.