China to offer booster shots amid Omicron spread

China will provide different booster shots of COVID-19 vaccines to people who have been fully vaccinated in response to the rapid spread of omicron, China's National Health Commission announced on Saturday.

NHC officials said that people who received inactivated vaccines produced by China can take a third shot of the same vaccine or a heterologous booster shot of adenovirus-vetro recombinant or recombinant protein vaccines, also produced by Chinese companies.

Both homologous and heterologous booster shots are only available to people over 18 years of age who have been fully vaccinated for at least six months. The decision was made after the highly transmissible omicron variant was found in China since last month.

Official statistics shows that over 1.23 billion people in China have had two COVID-19 vaccine doses, most of which are inactivated vaccines produced by China National Biotec Group and Sinovac Biotech.