A medical worker administers a booster shot of the COVID-19 vaccine to a woman at a vaccination site in Beijing, capital of China. Beijing has begun to offer a third COVID-19 booster vaccine to people of higher risks in some neighborhoods.

At least three districts of Beijing, Chaoyang, Dongcheng and Tongzhou, are beginning to offer COVID-19 vaccine booster shots to residents over 18 years old, joining at least 18 provincial-level regions in China's booster shots drive. 

Experts said that the move was prompted by the approach of winter as well as the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. 

As requested by the State Council, China's cabinet, the booster shots are being provided for residents over 18 who finished their original COVID-19 vaccination at least six months ago, according to the three districts' announcements on Tuesday. 

Before Beijing, at least 18 provincial-level regions had started to offer booster shots, including Northeast China's Heilongjiang, Central China's Hubei and South China's Guangxi. 

The intensive booster shot policies are likely related to the upcoming Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, a Beijing-based immunologist told the Global Times in an earlier interview, on condition of anonymity. 

Although the Games will absolutely have very strict prevention and control measures, booster shots for key groups can be a very helpful supplement, said the expert. 

Experts also pointed out that the launch of booster shots nationwide is aimed at curbing the latest flare-ups in China, in which 26 domestically transmitted COVID-19 cases have been reported as of Tuesday in seven provincial-level regions in the past three days. 

The latest available data revealed 19,796,400 people in Beijing had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as of September 28. The full vaccination rate of the city's adult residents reached 98.42 percent.

On Tuesday, Beijing reported one domestically transmitted case in Fengtai district involving a person who traveled to Beijing from Northwest China's Gansu Province on October 15 and was in the same train car with an infected patient. 

It was the first domestically transmitted COVID-19 case that the capital city reported in 69 days. 

Global Times