While China has pledged to ship hundreds of millions of vaccines abroad, domestically the rollout of inoculations has been slow, raising concerns that restrictions on international travel will remain until at least next year.

China was the first country to begin Covid-19 vaccinations in July and had administered 40.5m doses by early February, the highest number of injections behind the US. But at 2.9 doses per 100 residents, it is far behind other big economies and the levels needed to form herd immunity in the population. It has only given four-fifths of the vaccinations it had hoped to achieve by this point.

In some ways China’s vaccination programme has been a victim of the success of its containment policies. Rapid interventions last year brought the pandemic under control and saw case numbers tumble, reducing the incentive to get vaccinated.