A total of 777.046 million people in China have been fully vaccinated, said National Health Commission spokesperson Mi Feng at a press conference on Friday. That's more than half of the total population. 

More than 1.83 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered across China as of Thursday, said Mi.

"As of the midnight of August 12, 48 cities are involved in the epidemic, with 1,282 confirmed cases. However, 36 of these haven't reported new cases for over five consecutive days. Excluding cities like Yangzhou, Wuhan and Zhang Jiajie, other cities have only had sporadic cases," said He Qinghua, inspector of Disease Prevention and Control Bureau of the National Health Commission.

"Judging from this, the overall situation is controllable and there is minimal risk of a bigger outbreak nationwide," he added.

The country has also been vaccinating teenagers aged from 12 to 17, with over 60 million doses administered.

"The adverse response ratio of teenagers is not higher than that of adults. The common responses are fever, pain, redness and swelling. The abnormal responses are mainly allergies, like rashes, although these are very rare. We have seen a few, with very mild symptoms," said Wang Huaqing, chief expert on immunization planning at Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

As this latest outbreak is linked to the imported Delta variant of the virus, authorities said precautions have been strengthened for people working at ports.