Health officials on Friday called for stepping up health awareness campaigns to increase public willingness to get vaccinated.

Xia Gang, an official with the National Administration of Disease Prevention and Control, said that mass COVID-19 vaccination campaigns played a key role in enabling China to successfully pull through the epidemic.

To date, China has delivered nearly 3.5 billion COVID-19 vaccines and fully vaccinated about 1.28 billion people, including 231 million aged 60 or above.

Meanwhile, the national immunization program first launched in 1978 now offers 14 vaccines that protect against 15 diseases. "The vaccination rate under the program has remained above 90 percent, and incidence rates of multiple preventable diseases have dropped to historic lows, contributing to increasing life expectancy," Xia said.

"It is now important to consolidate the efforts of professional institutions and roll out additional awareness drives to battle false information online and deepen awareness of science, so as to increase the public willingness to be vaccinated."

He made the remarks during the launch ceremony for the second national vaccination education competition held in Beijing on Friday, which will be run by the Chinese Preventive Medicine Association until September.

Wu Xiangtian, Deputy Director of the National Health Commission's Department of Planning and Information, said that awareness drives should be strengthened to battle vaccine hesitancy.

He said that among key tasks this year for improving overall health by 2030 is the launch of more awareness initiatives about vaccinations and improving public health awareness.