Authorities blame the elderly for the continuing policy

Local health authorities identify the unsatisfactory vaccination rate of the elderly and those with chronic diseases as the reason for maintaining the “zero-Covid” policy in Macau, the coordinator of the local Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Leong Iek Hou said at Saturday’s briefing.

Questioned on the topic by the media, Leong explained that the need to maintain the policy is related to the “still less than high” vaccination rate among the elderly and the people with chronic diseases, “which is about 60%, so there is a risk that a large number of infected people in Macau will create a burden to the health system. We need to continue this measure of ‘dynamic zero-cases’ and do more prevention work. When we are better prepared and the key groups have a higher vaccination rate or medicines to cure the disease, we will adjust our prevention measures,” she concluded.

According to the most up-to-date vaccination records, almost 89% of the population of Macau has received at least two doses of a vaccine against Covid-19 and, from those, 48% of the population has received three or more doses of the vaccine.

The same authorities admit that the vaccination rate of those currently in Macau could be higher if taking into account those who were vaccinated in the mainland or other countries and regions, calling on the public to register in the local system vaccinations taken abroad.

For the time being, authorities know that from the 1.6 million doses of vaccines recorded in the local system, over 48,000 were inoculated outside Macau.