Beijing launches COVID-19 vaccine health insurance to ease hesitancy among elderly

China’s capital is offering elderly residents state-backed insurance for “medical accidents” linked to Covid-19 shots to ease vaccination hesitancy among the elderly.

Chinese officials have pointed to relatively lower vaccination rates among the elderly as a key weakness in its “dynamic zero-Covid” strategy.

The city of 22 million people had fully inoculated 97.7 per cent of its adult residents as of September last year, but only 80.6 per cent of people aged 60 and over had received their first dose by mid-April this year, according to city officials.

The new insurance plan, with premiums covered by the government, aims to “alleviate concerns over vaccination among the elderly group and their family members,” state media Thursday, citing information from the Beijing office of China’s banking and insurance regulator.

The insurance will be paid by the government with a cap of 500,000 yuan ($74,200) in personal liability.

Elsewhere, several districts in the northern city of Tianjin, also battling a fresh Omicron cluster, have pledged to “strictly limit” entry into venues such as stadiums for unvaccinated senior citizens who don’t have medical conditions that render vaccination unsuitable.

Insurance products were also launched for employees of small and micro companies in Beijing that had to shut down due to anti-epidemic measures to guarantee they have a basic support, media said.