United News of Bangladesh

A massive fire at a Cambodian hotel casino Thursday injured over 60 people and killed at least 19 — a number that officials warned would rise after the search for bodies resumes Friday. The blaze, which started around midnight Wednesday, was put out over 12 hours later at 2 p.m. Thursday, said Sek Sokhom, head of Banteay Meanchey province’s information department. He said more than 60 people were injured and the death toll was expected to rise once rescuers are able to access victims who were believed to still be under debris or in locked rooms. Videos posted on social media showed people falling from a roof after they were trapped by the fire at the Grand Diamond City casino and hotel in the town of Poipet. In a video posted by Cambodia’s firefighting agency, a crowd could be heard shouting pleas to rescue people trapped on the roof of the hotel complex, which is more than a dozen stories tall at its highest point. The video showed at least one person falling as the flames reached the roof. “Oh, please help rescue them. Pump water, pump water!” shouted onlookers. The Department of Fire Prevention, Extinguishing and Rescue said it heard calls for help at 4 a.m. emanating from rooms on the 13th, 14th and 15th floors. Hands and even a mobile phone's flashlight were seen waving from windows inside the complex. “The fire was massive, and was inside the casino, so it was difficult for our water cannons to reach it,” said a firefighter in the video posted online by the fire department. Read more: Rain, floods in Philippines leave 32 dead, others missing Many of those inside, both customers and staff, were from neighboring Thailand, which sent firetrucks and emergency workers Thursday to help cope with the crisis in the bustling border town. An initial investigation found that the fire may have been caused New Year’s holiday decorations drawing too much electricity, causing wires to overheat and burn, Sek Sokhom said. The dead and injured comprised people of several nationalities, including Thai, Chinese, Malaysian, Vietnamese and Cambodian, he said. A local Buddhist temple was being used to receive their bodies. The Grand Diamond City casino complex has 500 employees, and had 1,000 customers Wednesday, according to a report from Soth Kimkolmony, a spokesperson for Cambodia’s National Committee for Disaster Management. It was unclear how many were present when the fire broke out. “Right now, we are trying to bring the dead bodies from the building down. I don’t think there will be any survivors because of very thick smoke. Even we all (the rescue staff) have to wear proper gear when we go inside the building, otherwise we cannot breathe at all,” said Montri Khaosa-ard, a staff member of Thailand Ruamkatanyu Foundation, a social welfare organization that sends volunteers to disaster scenes. Thai and Cambodian rescue teams worked side by side in Thursday's search of the premises, but paused efforts their searched efforts at the dangerously damaged site as night fell. Thailand’s public television network, Thai PBS, reported that 50 Thais, both staff and customers, had been trapped inside the casino complex. It cited reports that the emergency ward in Aranyaprathet Hospital on the Thai side of the border was full and some victims had to be sent to other hospitals. Poipet in western Cambodia is a site of busy cross-border trade and tourism opposite the city of Aranyaprathet in more affluent Thailand. Read more: Heavy snow in Japan leaves 17 dead, dozens injured Casinos are illegal in Thailand. Many Thais visit neighboring countries such as Cambodia — a popular tourist destination with convenient international connections — to gamble. Poipet has a cluster of more than a dozen casinos. The Grand Diamond City casino is just a short walk from the border checkpoint with Thailand and popular with customers who make the four-hour drive from the Thai capital, Bangkok.

Moves by several countries to mandate COVID-19 tests for passengers arriving from China reflect global concern that new variants could emerge in its ongoing explosive outbreak — and that the government may not inform the rest of the world quickly enough. There have been no reports of new variants to date, but China has been accused of not being forthcoming about the virus since it first surfaced in the country in late 2019. The worry is that it may not be sharing data now on any signs of evolving strains that could spark fresh outbreaks elsewhere. The U.S., Japan, India, South Korea, Taiwan and Italy have announced testing requirements for passengers from China. The U.S. cited both the surge in infections and what it said was a lack of information, including genomic sequencing of the virus strains in the country. Authorities in Taiwan and Japan have expressed similar concern. “Right now the pandemic situation in China is not transparent,” Wang Pi-Sheng, the head of Taiwan’s epidemic command center, told The Associated Press. “We have a very limited grasp on its information, and it’s not very accurate.” The island will start testing everyone arriving from China on Jan. 1, ahead of the expected return of about 30,000 Taiwanese for the Lunar New Year holiday later in the month. The new Japanese rules, which restrict flights from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao to designated airports beginning Friday, are already disrupting holiday travel plans. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin noted Thursday that many countries have not changed their policies for travelers from China and said that any measures should treat people from all countries equally. Every new infection offers a chance for the coronavirus to mutate, and it is spreading rapidly in China. Scientists can’t say whether that means the surge will unleash a new mutant on the world — but they worry that might happen. Read more: Travelers from China will need to undergo COVID-19 testing in the US Chinese health officials have said the current outbreak is being driven by versions of the omicron variant that have also been detected elsewhere, and a surveillance system has been set up to identify any potentially worrisome new versions of the virus. Wu Zunyou, the chief epidemiologist at China’s Center for Disease Control, said Thursday that China has always reported the virus strains it has found in a timely way. “We keep nothing secret,” he said. “All work is shared with the world.” Italy’s health minister told the Senate that sequencing indicates that the variants detected in passengers arriving from China are already in circulation in Europe. “This is the most important and reassuring news,″ Orazio Schillaci said. That squares with what the European Union’s executive branch has said. The EU refrained Thursday from immediately following member Italy in requiring tests for visitors from China, but is assessing the situation. More broadly, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said the body needs more information on the severity of the outbreak in China, particularly on hospital and ICU admissions, “in order to make a comprehensive risk assessment of the situation on the ground.” China rolled back many of its tough pandemic restrictions earlier this month, allowing the virus to spread rapidly in a country that had seen relatively few infections since an initial devastating outbreak in the city of Wuhan. Spiraling infections have led to shortages of cold medicine, long lines at fever clinics, and at-capacity emergency rooms turning away patients. Cremations have risen several-fold, with a request from overburdened funeral homes in one city for families to postpone funeral services until next month. Chinese state media has not reported the fallout from the surge widely and government officials have blamed Western media for hyping up the situation. Read more: Four Chinese citizens sent to isolation from airport after testing Covid positive The global concerns, tinged with anger, are a direct result of the ruling Communist Party’s sudden exit from some of the world’s most stringent anti-virus policies, said Miles Yu, director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. “You can’t conduct the lunacy of ‘zero-COVID’ lockdowns for such a long period of time … and then suddenly unleash a multitude of the infected from a caged China to the world,” risking major outbreaks elsewhere, Yu said in an email. Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said the move by the U.S. may be more about increasing pressure on China to share more information than stopping a new variant from entering the country. China has been accused of masking the virus situation in the country before. An AP investigation found that the government sat on the release of genetic information about the virus for more than a week after decoding it, frustrating WHO officials. The government also tightly controlled the dissemination of Chinese research on the virus, impeding cooperation with international scientists. Research into the origins of the virus has also been stymied. A WHO expert group said in a report this year that “key pieces of data” were missing on the how the pandemic began and called for a more in-depth investigation.

Heavy rains and floods that devastated parts of the Philippines over the Christmas weekend have left at least 32 dead and 24 missing, the national disaster response agency said Thursday. More than 56,000 people were still in emergency shelters after bad weather disrupted Christmas celebrations in the eastern, central and southern Philippines. Images from the southern province of Misamis Occidental showed rescuers carrying an elderly woman on a plastic chair as they waded through a flooded street. Some residents in the province were seen hanging on to floaters as coast guard rescuers pulled them across chest-deep floods using a rope. Eighteen of the 32 deaths were reported in the Northern Mindanao region, while 22 of the 24 missing were from Eastern Visayas in the central Philippines and the eastern Bicol region, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said. Most of the deaths were from drowning while among the missing were fishermen whose boats capsized, the agency said. Read more: Philippine rain, flooding cause at least 25 deaths Over 4,000 houses were damaged by the floods along with roads and bridges, and some areas were without power or water, the agency reported. A shear line — the point where warm and cold air meet — triggered rains in parts of the country, the state weather bureau said. It forecast light to heavy rains in the next 24 hours for some of the same areas affected by the floods.

The U.N. Security Council on Tuesday decried increasing restrictions on women's rights in Afghanistan, urging the country's Taliban rulers to reverse them immediately. The Security Council “reiterated its deep concern of the suspension of schools beyond the sixth grade, and its call for the full, equal, and meaningful participation of women and girls in Afghanistan,” it said in a press statement. Read more: 4 NGOs suspend work in Afghanistan after Taliban bar women U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk pointed to “terrible consequences” of a decision to bar women from working for non-governmental organizations. Last week, Taliban authorities stopped university education for women, sparking international outrage and demonstrations in Afghan cities. On Saturday, they announced the exclusion of women from NGO work, a move that already has prompted four major international aid agencies to suspend operations in Afghanistan. “No country can develop — indeed survive — socially and economically with half its population excluded," Türk said in a statement issued in Geneva. "These unfathomable restrictions placed on women and girls will not only increase the suffering of all Afghans but, I fear, pose a risk beyond Afghanistan’s borders.” “This latest decree by the de facto authorities will have terrible consequences for women and for all Afghan people,” Türk said, adding that banning women from working for NGOs will deprive them and their families of incomes and of the right to “contribute positively” to the country's development. Read more: Taliban bar women from university education in Afghanistan “The ban will significantly impair, if not destroy, the capacity of these NGOs to deliver the essential services on which so many vulnerable Afghans depend," he said. Despite initially promising a more moderate rule respecting rights for women and minorities when they took power last year, the Taliban have widely implemented their strict interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia. They have banned girls from middle school and high school, restricted women from most employment and ordered them to wear head-to-toe clothing in public. Women are also banned from parks and gyms. “Women and girls cannot be denied their inherent rights," Türk said. “Attempts by the de facto authorities to relegate them to silence and invisibility will not succeed — it will merely harm all Afghans, compound their suffering, and impede the country’s development.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un presented unspecified goals to further bolster his military power next year at a meeting of top political officials, state media reported Wednesday, in an indication he’ll continue his provocative run of weapons displays. Kim’s statement came as animosities with rival South Korea rose sharply this week as the South accused the North of flying drones across the rivals’ border for the first time in five years. This year, North Korea already performed a record number of missile tests in what experts call an attempt to modernize its arsenal and increase its leverage in future dealings with the United States. Read more: Kim claims N. Korean successes, wants to overcome challenges During the Tuesday session at the ongoing plenary meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party, Kim analyzed new security challenges in international politics and on the Korean Peninsula and clarified principles and directions to take in external relations and fights against enemies to protect national interests and sovereignty, according to the official Korean Central News Agency. Kim “set forth new key goals for bolstering up the self-reliant defense capability to be pushed ahead with in 2023 under the multilaterally changing situation,” KCNA said, without elaborating. Some observers say the new goals could be related to Kim’s push to expand his nuclear arsenal and introduce a spate of high-tech weapons systems such as multi-warhead missiles, a more agile long-range weapon, a spy satellite and advanced drones. They say Kim would eventually aim to use his boosted nuclear capability to force its rivals to accept the North as a legitimate nuclear state, a status he would think is essential in getting international sanctions on his country to be lifted. On Monday, South Korea’s military fired warning shots and launched fighter jets and helicopters, after detecting what it called five North Korean drones that violated the South’s airspace. South Korea also flown its own surveillance assets, in a likely reference to unmanned drones, across the border into North Korea in response. Read more: Kim claims that the ICBM test shows the ability to counter US threats South Korea’s military said it had failed to shoot down the drones and offered a public apology over causing security concerns. President Yoon Suk Yeol called for strong air defense and high-tech stealth drones to better monitor North Korea. Some experts say the North Korean drone flights might have been designed to test South Korean and U.S. readiness and neutralize a previous inter-Korean tension-reduction agreement. They say North Korea likely assessed its drones as a cheap yet effective method to cause security jitters and a domestic divide in South Korea. Yoon, a conservative who took office in May, said Tuesday that South Korea has had little anti-drone training since 2017, a year when his liberal predecessor Moon Jae-in was inaugurated. In an apparent effort to blame the allegedly lax air defense system to Moon’s engagement policy toward North Korea, Yoon said that “I think our people must have seen well how dangerous a policy relying on the North’s good faith and (peace) agreements would be.” Moon’s liberal opposition Democratic Party accused the president of trying to shift a responsibility for his government’s security policy failure to someone else. Under a five-year arms build-up plan announced Wednesday, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said it’ll push to bolster its so-called three-axis system — preemptive strike, missile defense and retaliatory attack capabilities — to cope with North Korean nuclear threats. To do so, it said it’ll procure more stealth fighter jets and submarines capable of firing ballistic missiles, operate additional interceptor missiles and radars, and develop more powerful, precision-guided weapons. It said South Korea will also procure diverse types of drones to strengthen its surveillance capacities.

China says it will resume issuing ordinary visas and passports in another big step away from anti-virus controls that isolated the country for almost three years, setting up a potential flood of millions of Chinese going abroad for next month’s Lunar New Year holiday. The announcement Tuesday adds to abrupt changes that are rolling back some of the world’s strictest anti-virus controls as President Xi Jinping's government tries to reverse an economic slump. Rules that confined millions of people to their homes kept China’s infection rate low but fueled public frustration and crushed economic growth. The latest decision could send an influx of free-spending Chinese tourists to revenue-starved destinations in Asia and Europe for Lunar New Year, which begins Jan. 22. But it also presents a danger they might spread COVID-19 as infections surge in China. Read more: China races to vaccinate elderly, but many are reluctant China stopped issuing visas to foreigners and passports to its own people at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. The National Immigration Administration of China said it will start taking applications Jan. 8 for passports for tourists to go abroad. It said it will resume issuing approval for tourists and businesspeople to visit Hong Kong, a Chinese territory with its own border controls. The agency said it will take applications for ordinary visas and residence permits. It said the government will “gradually resume” allowing in foreign visitors and gave no indication when full-scale tourist travel from abroad might be allowed. Health experts and economists expected the ruling Communist Party to keep restrictions on travel into China until at least mid-2023 while it carries out a campaign to vaccinate millions of elderly people. Experts say that is necessary to prevent a public health crisis. During the pandemic, Chinese with family emergencies or whose work travel was deemed important could obtain passports, but some students and businesspeople with visas to go to foreign countries were blocked by border guards from leaving. The handful of foreign businesspeople and others who were allowed into China were quarantined for up to one week. Before the pandemic, China was the biggest source of foreign tourists for most of its Asian neighbors and an important market for Europe and the United States. The government has dropped or eased most quarantine, testing and other restrictions within China, joining the United States, Japan and other governments in trying to live with the virus instead of stamping out transmission. Read more: Reports of severe COVID in China are "extremely concerning", WHO Japan and India responded to China’s surge in infections by requiring virus tests for travelers from the country. U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to relate internal discussions, said Washington is considering taking similar steps. On Monday, the government said it would scrap quarantine requirements for travelers arriving from abroad, also effective Jan. 8. Foreign companies welcomed the change as an important step to revive slumping business activity. Business groups have warned global companies were shifting investment away from China because foreign executives were blocked from visiting. The American Chamber of Commerce in China says more than 70% of companies that responded to a poll this month expect the impact of the latest wave of outbreaks to last no more than three months, ending in early 2023. The government has stopped reporting nationwide case numbers but announcements by some cities indicate at least tens and possibly hundreds of millions of people might have been infected since the surge began in early October. The outbreaks prompted complaints Beijing relaxed controls too abruptly. Officials say the wave began before the changes. China only counts deaths from pneumonia or respiratory failure in its official COVID-19 toll, a health official said last week. That excludes many deaths other countries would attribute to COVID-19. Experts have forecast 1 to 2 million deaths in China through the end of 2023. Also Monday, the government downgraded COVID-19 from a Class A infectious disease to a Class B disease and removed it from the list of illnesses that require quarantine. It said authorities would stop tracking down close contacts and designating areas as being at high or low risk of infection.

Police in Indian-controlled Kashmir said government forces killed four suspected militants in a gunbattle on Wednesday. A top police officer, Mukesh Singh, said troops intercepted a truck in the outskirts of Jammu city early Wednesday following its “unusual movement” on a highway. Read more: Police break up Muslim gathering in Kashmir, dozens detained As the troops began searching the truck, gunfire came from inside it, to which the troops retaliated, leading to a gunfight, Singh told reporters. Police said four suspected militants were killed and authorities recovered at least eight automatic rifles and some ammunition from the truck. According to police, the driver of the truck escaped and a search was under way to find him. There was no independent confirmation of the alleged gunbattle. Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan and both claim the disputed territory in its entirety. Read more: Hindu banker and a worker from India fatally shot in Kashmir Rebels in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir have been fighting New Delhi’s rule since 1989. Most Muslim Kashmiris support the rebel goal of uniting the territory, either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country. India insists the Kashmir militancy is Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Pakistan denies the charge, and most Kashmiris consider it a legitimate freedom struggle. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.

The death toll from heavy rains and floods that devastated parts of the Philippines over the Christmas weekend has risen to 25, with 26 others still missing, the national disaster response agency said Wednesday. Nearly 400,000 people were affected, with over 81,000 still in shelters and nine others injured, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said. Sixteen of the 25 deaths were reported in Northern Mindanao region in the south, while 12 of the 26 missing are from the eastern Bicol region, the council added. Read: 26 Rohingya refugees died at sea making perilous journey: UN A shear line — the point where warm and cold air meet — triggered rains in parts of eastern, central and southern Philippines, the state weather bureau PAGASA said. The weather disturbance disrupted Christmas celebration in affected provinces, with photos from the southern province of Misamis Occidental showing rescuers carrying an elderly woman on a plastic chair as they waded through a flooded street. Some residents in the province were seen hanging on to floaters as coast guard rescuers pulled them across chest-deep flood using a rope. The disaster management council said 1,196 houses were damaged by the floods, while sections of 123 roads and 12 bridges were affected. Some areas remain without power or water supply. While the effect of the shear line has weakened, a new low pressure area may bring moderate to heavy rains within the next 24 hours to the same areas affected by the Christmas weekend floods. The weather bureau said Wednesday that flooding and landslides are likely, especially in areas with significant prior rainfall. Read: Urgently rescue boat carrying upto 200 Rohingyas: ASEAN parliamentarians urge member states, others Each year about 20 typhoons and storms batter the Philippines, one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries. The archipelago is located on the “Ring of Fire” along the Pacific Ocean’s rim, where many volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur.

South Korea’s president on Tuesday called for stronger air defenses and high-tech stealth drones while the military apologized for failing to shoot down North Korean drones that crossed the border for the first time in five years. South Korea’s military scrambled warplanes and attack helicopters on Monday, but they failed to bring down any of the North Korean drones that flew back home or disappeared from South Korean radars. It raised serious questions about South Korea’s air defense network at a time when tensions remain high over North Korea’s torrid run of missile tests this year. On Tuesday, the military again launched fighter jets and attack helicopters after spotting suspicious flight paths at a front-line area. A local county office sent emergency text messages notifying residents of a new batch of North Korean drones. But the military later said it was a flock of birds. “We have a plan to create a military drone unit tasked with monitoring key military facilities in North Korea. But we’ll advance the establishment of the drone unit as soon as possible because of yesterday’s incident,” President Yoon Suk Yeol said during a regular Cabinet Council meeting. “We’ll also introduce state-of-the art stealth drones and bolster our surveillance capability.” He said that South Korea’s military needs more intensive readiness and exercises to cope with threats posed by North Korean drones. Lt. Gen. Kang Shin Chul, chief director of operation at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a televised statement the military feels sorry because of its failure to shoot down the North Korean drones and for causing big public concerns. Kang acknowledged South Korea lacks capacities to detect and strike small surveillance drones with a wingspan of less than 3 meters (9.8 feet) though it has assets to spot and bring down bigger combat drones. Kang said South Korea will establish drone units with various capacities and aggressively deploy military assets to shoot down enemy drones. It was the first time North Korean drones entered South Korean airspace since 2017. The drone flights came three days after South Korea said North Korea launched two short-range ballistic missiles, extending its record testing activities this year. North Korea has touted its drone program, and South Korean officials have previously said the North had about 300 drones. Advanced drones are among modern weapons systems that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has vowed to procure, along with multi-warheads, underwater-launched nuclear missiles and a spy satellite. Read more: S. Korea’s leader calls for stealth drones to monitor North Since taking office in May, Yoon, a conservative, has expanded regular military drills with the United States and vowed to sternly deal with North Korean provocations. He’s offered massive support plans to North Korea if it abandons its nuclear weapons, but the North has rejected his overture. On Monday, South Korea sent its own surveillance assets, apparently unmanned drones, across the border as corresponding steps against the North Korean drone flights. South Korea’s public confirmation of reconnaissance activities inside North Korea is highly unusual and likely reflects a resolve by Yoon’s government to get tough on North Korean provocations. Yoon used the drone incident to hit at his liberal predecessor’s engagement policy with North Korea. He said Tuesday South Korea’s military had conducted little anti-drone training since 2017, when Moon Jae-in was inaugurated. “I think our people must have seen well how dangerous a policy relying on the North’s good faiths and (peace) agreements would be,” he said. Moon’s liberal opposition Democratic Party accused Yoon of shifting his government’s “security disaster” to someone else. Party spokesperson Park Sung-joon called on Yoon to thoroughly disclose what he did when the North Korean drones were flying in South Korean territory. Moon was credited with arranging now-dormant diplomacy on North Korea’s nuclear program, but also faced criticism that his appeasement policy allowed North Korea to buy time and boost its nuclear arsenal despite international sanctions. During his campaigning, Yoon described Moon’s government as “subservient” to North Korea and accused him of undermining South Korea’s seven-decade military alliance with the United States. Read more: Kim claims N. Korean successes, wants to overcome challenges Earlier Tuesday, North Korea’s state media announced the start of a key ruling Workers’ Party meeting the previous day to review past policies and discuss next year’s plans. During the meeting, Kim Jong Un called for stronger efforts to overcome hardships and challenges facing his country. But he still claimed North Korea has reported some successes “in the arduous course” and said his country’s national strength has “remarkably” increased in military, economic and other areas, according to the Korean Central News Agency. Some observers say Kim may need such propaganda-driven claims to draw greater public loyalty to bolster his weapons arsenal and address economic woes while facing U.S.-led sanctions and pressure campaigns to curb his nuclear ambitions. The North Korean Workers’ Party meeting is expected to last several days, and Kim will likely address issues such as his arms buildup, relations with the United States and the economy in later sessions.  

Chinese authorities are going door to door and paying people older than 60 to get vaccinated against COVID-19. But even as cases surge, 64-year-old Li Liansheng said his friends are alarmed by stories of fevers, blood clots and other side effects. “When people hear about such incidents, they may not be willing to take the vaccines,” said Li, who had been vaccinated before he caught COVID-19. A few days after his 10-day bout with the virus, Li is nursing a sore throat and cough. He said it was like a “normal cold” with a mild fever. China has joined other countries in treating cases instead of trying to stamp out virus transmission by dropping or easing rules on testing, quarantines and movement as it tries to reverse an economic slump. But the shift has flooded hospitals with feverish, wheezing patients. The National Health Commission announced a campaign Nov. 29 to raise the vaccination rate among older Chinese, which health experts say is crucial to avoiding a health care crisis. It’s also the biggest hurdle before the ruling Communist Party can lift the last of the world’s most stringent antivirus restrictions. China kept case numbers low for two years with a “zero-COVID” strategy that isolated cities and confined millions of people to their homes. Now, as it backs off that approach, it is facing the widespread outbreaks that other countries have already gone through. The health commission has recorded only six COVID-19 fatalities this month, bringing the country’s official toll to 5,241. That is despite multiple reports by families of relatives dying. China only counts deaths from pneumonia or respiratory failure in its official COVID-19 toll, a health official said last week. That unusually narrow definition excludes many deaths other countries would attribute to COVID-19. Experts have forecast 1 to 2 million deaths in China through the end of 2023. Li, who was exercising at the leafy grounds of central Beijing’s Temple of Heaven, said he is considering getting a second booster due to the publicity campaign: “As long as we know the vaccine won’t cause big side effects, we should take it.” Neighborhood committees that form the lowest level of government have been ordered to find everyone 65 and older and keep track of their health. They are doing what state media call the “ideological work” of lobbying residents to persuade elderly relatives to get vaccinated. In Beijing, the Chinese capital, the Liulidun neighborhood is promising people over 60 up to 500 yuan ($70) to get a two-dose vaccination course and one booster. Read more: China launches Covid-19 vaccine inhaled through mouth The National Health Commission announced Dec. 23 the number of people being vaccinated daily had more than doubled to 3.5 million nationwide. But that still is a small fraction of the tens of millions of shots that were being administered every day in early 2021. Older people are put off by potential side effects of Chinese-made vaccines, for which the government hasn’t announced results of testing on people in their 60s and older. Li said a 55-year-old friend suffered fevers and blood clots after being vaccinated. He said they can’t be sure the shot was to blame, but his friend is reluctant to get another. “It’s also said the virus keeps mutating,” Li said. “How do we know if the vaccines we take are useful?” Some are reluctant because they have diabetes, heart problems and other health complications, despite warnings from experts that it is even more urgent for them to be vaccinated because the risks of COVID-19 are more serious than potential vaccine side effects in almost everyone. A 76-year-old man taking his daily walk around the Temple of Heaven with the aid of a stick said he wants to be vaccinated but has diabetes and high blood pressure. The man, who would give only his surname, Fu, said he wears masks and tries to avoid crowds. Older people also felt little urgency because low case numbers before the latest surge meant few faced risk of infection. That earlier lack of infections, however, left China with few people who have developed antibodies against the virus. “Now, the families and relatives of the elderly people should make it clear to them that an infection can cause serious illness and even death,” said Jiang Shibo of the Fudan University medical school in Shanghai. Read more: Reports of severe COVID in China are "extremely concerning", WHO More than 90% of people in China have been vaccinated but only about two-thirds of those over 80, according to the National Health Commission. According to its 2020 census, China has 191 million people aged 65 and over — a group that, on its own, would be the eighth most populous country, ahead of Bangladesh. “Coverage rates for people aged over 80 still need to be improved,” the Shanghai news outlet The Paper said. “The elderly are at high risk.” Du Ming’s son arranged to have the 100-year-old vaccinated, according to his caretaker, Li Zhuqing, who was pushing a face-mask-clad Du through a park in a wheelchair. Li agreed with that approach because none of the family members have been infected, which means they’d be more likely to bring the disease home to Du if they were exposed. Health officials declined requests by reporters to visit vaccination centers. Two who briefly entered centers were ordered to leave when employees found out who they were.