Beijing offers elderly COVID-19 vaccine insurance to ease hesitancy

Payout for elderlies experiencing adverse effects could go as high as $74k.

China’s capital of Beijing is offering elderly residents government-backed insurance for medical accidents that would be linked to taking the COVID-19 vaccine.

The insurance is to help ease vaccine hesitancy amongst the elder. According to city officials, of the 22 million people in Beijing, 97.7% of adult residents as of September last year were fully inoculated but only 80.6% of people aged 60 and over received their first dose of the vaccine in mid-April this year.

The new insurance plan could give a payout of ¥500k ($74.2k) per person for a single benefit. Other specific details of the plan were not provided.

The city continues to ramp up its inoculations as it suffers its worst outbreak yet. Officials blamed the relatively lower vaccination rates amongst the elderly as a weakness of its ‘dynamic zero-COVID’ strategy.

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

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