The city of Beijing has softened a plan to require Covid vaccinations to enter some public facilities and maintains that a negative virus test is sufficient. Pictured here is a virus testing site in Beijing, China on Tuesday, July 5, 2022.
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BEIJING — China’s first large-scale attempt to require Covid vaccinations appears to be over before it began.
On Wednesday, the capital Beijing announced that from Monday most people will have to be vaccinated before entering social gathering places such as gyms.
On Thursday, the city removed mention of the mandate, according to the state-run Beijing Daily.
The report cited a member of the city’s Office of Virus Prevention and Control as highlighting the current rules — a negative virus test in the past 72 hours — for entering public places. But the report did not mention the vaccination requirement, only saying that the government representative encouraged people to get vaccinated voluntarily.
When contacted by CNBC, a representative of the Beijing Municipal Government confirmed the Beijing Daily report. The capital reported zero new Covid cases for Thursday with or without symptoms.
The state-run newspaper said it contacted the government office after the vaccination mandate sparked “attention and concern” among city residents, according to a CNBC translation of the Chinese text.
The initial report by Beijing Daily on Wednesday attracted many comments on WeChat.
The most popular comments asked how someone would prove they were not ‘suitable’ for Covid vaccinations – particularly in complex situations for the elderly or pregnant people. Others asked for clarification on which public spaces are classed as ‘places of social gathering’ and whether this includes train stations. Still others noted problems with the inability to integrate vaccination records from Hong Kong or foreign countries into the Beijing city health code system.
In China, usually only Chinese vaccines from Sinopharm or Sinovac are available to the public.
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