Introduction
The pandemic of the infamous disease of 2019, particularly COVID-19, has caused considerable challenges in formulating preventive interventions. Notably, scientists are still in the process of researching and doing illustrative experiments on the topic of infection-related social contacts. Hence, this paper aims to collect the existing knowledge on the vaccination process in China, the country where coronavirus was first identified, and the barriers preventing the issue from being addressed. The goal of the research is to investigate challenges in the Chinese vaccination system and the social attitude toward governmental methods of reducing infestations and providing injections. Consequently, the present situation connected with fighting against COVID-19 may become a highly illustrative example of possible medical and social strategies.
The Beginning of COVID-19
Initially, the aforementioned disease was discovered on a Chinese territory called Wuhan and after that the entire world became affected by the following pandemic. The analysts from China, while analyzing the state of new patients, identified the virus as a novel coronavirus. Further, the genetic research also provided the diagnostical information that the infection was viral. Observations indicated a capability of this virus to spread from human to human, which was consequently reported in most countries of the Earth. The contamination of a novel virus occurs by close contact with an infected person, exposed to sneezing, coughing, respiratory droplets, or aerosols. (Shereen et al., 2020)
While the rate of infections decreased in the summer of 2020, the governmental policies of many countries had to loosen the lockdown in order to prevent the destruction of social and economic systems. However, because of increased communal activities, mobility, and offline communication, people all over the world have been put in a reoccurring situation of COVID-19 resurgence. Moreover, the fact that the majority of the population is susceptible and does not have any medical protection from coronavirus showed a critical need for urgent global vaccination.
Ten vaccines for coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome two, were approved or limitedly approved for the necessary emergency care in January 2021. The medical workers and public health advocates have been waiting for the global vaccination to begin because it is the main method for reducing the velocity of the disease spreading. Despite the fact that vaccination is not supposed to immediately achieve herd immunity, it remains the only known medical method that has proven its efficiency (Huang et al., 2021). Further, more thorough strategies related to vaccine implementation are reported to be in the process of being identified. To this time, the global community needs urgent and crucial help in learning the characteristics of virus contamination, physical distancing, the obligatoriness of mass vaccination, as well as interpersonal mobility, to prevent future COVID-19-related complications.
Major Obstacles of the Research
Undoubtedly, crucial barriers that are connected with upcoming coronavirus immunization still exist, one of which is described as social vaccine uncertainty whether to inject it or refuse. Public attitude towards vaccination shows the general understanding of the probability of being contaminated, which is essential to get the biggest possible rate of vaccination coverage to successfully stop COVID-19 from spreading (Wang et al., 2020).
It is now important that the global scientific community collaborates and investigates the medical healing mechanisms associated with the pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2. (Shereen et al., 2020) Besides the problem of high rates of unsatisfactory acceptance, the amount of real uptake rate of pandemic injections could be much lower after the promotion of mass immunization programs and the introduction of the vaccine. The main issue remains a highly negative reaction to the probability of mass immunization. Moreover, scientists report the fact that real rates of vaccine uptake could be surprisingly lower than expected after all the promotion and counseling on the importance of vaccination.
Effectiveness of Vaccination
As Chinese scientists have shown, vaccination has a protective ability because it guarantees long-lasting immunity and reduces the SCI of coronavirus transference between defenseless against the disease communities. The density of the city population is likely to change quite drastically which is already affecting the disease and SCI transmission.
High coverage effective vaccination of the global community makes other forms of protection like physical distancing not as necessary as it used to be which happens mostly because of fast medical modernizations and innovations (Huang et al., 2021). Indeed, urgent need of new facilities and materials to fight the coronavirus disease pandemic caused the unprecedented development of new immunizations in 2019 (Wang et al., 2020).
It is critical to rate the positive or negative attitude of Chinese people towards the mass vaccination and, based on the following research, find the most useful methods and programs to keep the high coverage level of vaccination (Leng et al., 2021). Furthermore, vaccinations are rather sufficient strategies of preventing the COVID-19 outbreak, however, their efficacy depends on personal necessities of the Chinese social groups and main characteristics that may affect their decision of accepting the immunization.
Finally, nine medically proven Chinese vaccines had turned out to be in phase 3 trials worldwide by the end of October 2020 (Wang et al., 2021). Besides, efficiency and medical approval of the injections are not as essential as their uptake rate in order to eventually stop probable coronavirus outbreaks. Moreover, it is crucial to achieve proper levels of vaccinated citizens to create herd immunity.
Vaccine Hesitancy
First, one of the major threats to the effectiveness of immunization strategies is vaccine hesitancy. Based on the present research, main characteristics of Chinese citizens like an experience of past injections, social status, age, and gender greatly affected their readiness for immunization. These factors were taken as indicatives of various regressions examining any alterations participants’ willingness to accept the vaccine intake.
Not considering different time points of the conducted surveys, most people, whose work was related to service or helping others, did not accept the immunization, whereas people working in office were highly likely to agree to get the injection. Consequently, people who accepted the influenza immunization were positive about the vaccine intake. Further, most of the elderly participants were afraid of injections and refused to take them. In the research made by Chinese social studies scientists, people who did not agree to get vaccinated were surveyed to understand their motives (Wang et al., 2021). Overall, Chinese citizens were not sure about the efficiency of the coronavirus immunization; some did not consider vaccination to be essential. Others worried about their safety after the injection or simply did not have enough time to take it.
Reasons behind Vaccine Refusal
Remarkably, most of the Chinese participants were worried about any negative health-related side effects after injecting the vaccine, while the minority of people found the immunization unimportant. In the latest research on China, scientists discovered that an overwhelming majority of the surveyed were ready to get the injection as soon as it became available. Nevertheless, approximately half of the population was willing to wait until the immunization was proven to be a hundred percent effective and safe (Wang et al., 2021).
It is clear that reasonable concerns were based on prolonged and repetitive misinformation in Chinese communities. These pseudoscientific reports may have eventually caused people’s uncertainty when actual vaccination was confirmed safe and effective. Notably, the frequencies of the behavior of personal protection changed between the research time points.
As the findings showed, most people seemed to continue wearing masks repeatedly because the vast majority of Chinese communities agreed that mask-wearing was effectively preventing the contamination. Surprisingly, service workers were highly likely to accept social distancing outdoors and sanitizing their hands with alcohol, consequently, people had a positive reaction towards these mandatory safety measures. Considering participants’ decreasing immunization acceptance and readiness to continue doing individual precautions, scientists showed that people viewed individual safety measures as an effective substitute for vaccination. The Chinese citizens somehow believed that these precautions could be effective, although the vaccination was and still is the most safe and sufficient method of preventing coronavirus.
Regarding the last research on the readiness of Chinese citizens to get vaccinated, differences were mostly based on various occupations, considering various intellectual and social factors. All the types of clerical service workers connected with office jobs did not find good reasons to think that the immunization was rather necessary. They were highly likely to think that the mandatory vaccination was ineffective or not important, which was because they had less professional education on health, hence, they did not know the advantages of vaccine injections. Nevertheless, these particular workers had the highest chance of being contaminated by COVID-19 due to the conditions of their work environment.
Studies showed that service workers had more physically complicated jobs and much lower salaries in comparison to the managers and executives; that is why they were considered to have lower socioeconomic status. (Wang et al., 2021). These workers could not follow all the safety measures, for instance, physical distancing, so they were considered to be put in the COVID-19 priority groups together with the elderly, disabled patients, medical workers, and so on. Therefore, to increase Chinese participants’ rate of the vaccine intake there have to be proper financial subsidies to teach the aforementioned social groups on the effectiveness of the immunization and its safety in the workplace. In any case, the workers’ employers have to properly informed and encouraged as well.
Conclusion
To sum up, this research paper shed light on the problem of the biggest and most vulnerable social communities refusing or hesitating to get vaccinated. The studies showed how particular social demographics influenced the behavior and willingness to accept mostly mandatory governmental policies of China for coronavirus prevention. The struggles of making the majority of the population understand the importance of medical injections during this pandemic exist to this day worldwide. Unfortunately, the process of seeking people’s acceptance and readiness to use the medically testified vaccines in China seems to be quite complicated.
However, the experience of Chinese citizens fighting against the common health-related problem and all the modern Chinese studies on COVID-19 are of great importance for other countries who need guidance on the methods of proper public vaccination.
References
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