MNI China Press Digest April 30: Covid Vac, Fintech Control

The following lists highlights from Chinese press reports on Friday:

• China must boost the production of vaccines and increase inoculation efforts to create a domestic line of defense against the Covid-19 virus, the People's Daily said citing Vice Premier Sun Chunlan. China has administered 244 million shots of vaccines and established 50,000 vaccination locations through the campaign, the country's largest in history, it said citing Sun.
• China has reached the "final stage" in approving the use of BioNTech's mRNA COVID-19 vaccine in cooption with Shanghai-based Fosun Pharma, the Global Times reported citing an interview with the German company's CEO Ugur Şahin. The developer is evaluating combining mRNA vaccines with inactivated and adenovirus vector jabs as booster shots to stabilize antibody levels against the coronavirus, Sahin was cited as saying. BioNTech is expected to be the first foreign-developed Covid-19 vaccine that China will import to pave the way for mixed shots in sequential inoculation, the newspaper said citing Shao Yiming, leading physician-scientist and immunologist serving at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
• China showed its resolve to tighten the supervision of fintech companies' activities and limit their operations within legal scopes, China News Service said in a commentary on its WeChat account after the People's Bank of China and three other top financial regulators on Thursday summoned 13 tech firms including Tencent and ByteDance for talks. The move, which came 17 days after the Ant Group was called in by the regulators, further reminded financial business to focus on serving the real economy and consumers and keep their financial risks in check, China News said.