Shanghai (China), March 10. China has spent some 150,000 million yuan ($21,532 million, €20,336 million) on its covid-19 vaccination campaign throughout 2021 and 2022, according to National Health Security data. Administration (NHSA) quoted today by the private digital newspaper Caixin.
The agency also said today that in 2022 the national health insurance fund paid out some 4,300 million yuan ($617 million, 583 million euros) in PCR tests to detect covid, although that this post mainly covered tests carried out in hospitals before allowing the admission of new patients.
In May last year, when almost the entire country was getting free PCR tests on a regular basis as part of the already dismantled ‘zero covid’ strategy, the NHSA banned funding them with money from the national health fund. health insurance, which could only be used for the above-mentioned tests in hospitals.
Caixin estimates the cost of each PCR test at between 3.5 and 16 yuan (between 0.5 and 2.3 dollars, between 0.47 and 2.17 euros), an expense that falls on the budgets of local and regional authorities, which raises concerns about the state of the finances of these administrations, already weighed down by the decline in economic activity resulting from “zero covid” restrictions and confinements, as well as by other factors such as the real estate crisis.
This same media recently reported that the amount spent on anti-covid measures had reached the equivalent of $10.3 billion in 2022 in the southeastern province of Guangzhou, also mentioning what had been used in Zhejiang. (est, 6.3 billion dollars) or in the capital of Beijing (4.350 million dollars).
NHSA data shows the National Health Insurance Fund closed 2022 with a balance of around 4.3 trillion yuan ($617,284 million, 583,290 million) after entering 3 trillion yuan. ($430,663 million, €409,947 million) and spent 2.4 trillion yuan ($344,531 million, €325,557 million). EFE
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