Almost 90 percent of Chinese people have been fully vaccinated against the novel coronavirus and almost 700 million have received COVID-19 booster shots, a senior health official said on Friday.

As of Thursday, the country had administered more than 3.27 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines, covering almost 1.28 billion people, and more than 1.24 billion have been fully vaccinated, said Lei Zhenglong, deputy head of the Bureau of Disease Prevention and Control of the National Health Commission.

More than 223 million seniors aged 60 or above have been vaccinated, more than 212 million fully vaccinated and almost 144 million having received booster shots, Lei said.

The country's vaccination efforts are running smoothly, but vaccination among the elderly still lags behind other age groups, he said, adding that the commission will make arrangements to make vaccinations more convenient and safer for the elderly.

Wang Huaqing, chief immunization expert at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said vaccination is the most effective and convenient way to control epidemics and is cheaper than other measures.

From both the individual and the collective point of view, the benefits of vaccination far outweigh its risks as vaccines help prevent infection, serious disease and death, he said.

Data indicates that the risk of severe disease and death is reduced by over 90 percent once people have been fully vaccinated, he said.

Although there can be side effects, they are extremely rare, affecting roughly one in a million, Wang said.

According to data from Hong Kong, the death rate among COVID-19 patients is only one in a thousand among the fully vaccinated, while those who have not been vaccinated or who have received only one shot have a death rate of 1.91 percent, meaning that the latter face a death rate almost 20 times higher than the former, he added.