China relies on zero covid - "flip-flop approach is even more expensive"

China is the only country in the world that strictly adheres to a zero Covid strategy.

But the delta variant only enables this with radical measures.

Many expats are leaving the country.

Beijing / Munich - China * has taken local outbreaks of Covid-19 to zero three times in the past five months. But that has become more and more difficult since the delta variant has also dominated in the People's Republic. The outbreaks follow one another at an ever faster pace. The fourth started in mid-October and has now covered 20 out of 31 provinces. And even if the number of cases - with a total of several hundred sick people since then - seems almost magically low from a German perspective, the state's health authorities have been on alert for weeks.

China's vaccination rate is officially 76 percent with more than a billion people vaccinated.

Booster vaccinations and immunization for children are also ongoing.

But it is unclear how well the local Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines protect against the Delta variant.

Foreign vaccines are not approved in China.

“The outbreaks in China's neighboring countries and around the world are still large.

And that makes this winter and next spring a complicated and serious challenge, ”said Wu Liangyou of the National Health Commission on Saturday, according to

.

China will not change its zero-covid policy.

China: the only country in the world with a zero-covid policy

With this approach, China is now the only country in the world. While Australia, New Zealand and Singapore have now moved away from their zero-covid policy, China and its Hong Kong Special Administrative Region are continuing to pull the hard line. The authorities send entire neighborhoods into lockdown as soon as a single case appears there. If cases rise to a dozen or more, entire cities will be subject to curfews. Since last week, the approximately four million inhabitants of the northwest Chinese city of Lanzhou on the Yellow River have only been allowed to leave their homes in emergencies or to buy groceries.

China had previously reported 29 new local corona infections, six of them in Gansu province, the capital of which is Lanzhou.

All residents have been tested for the virus several times since then.

In the city of Xining, almost 1.5 million residents were also tested for the second time on Monday, although the first round of mass tests were all negative.

China: micromanaging local corona outbreaks

The authorities do not shy away from micromanagement in the fight against the coronavirus *. When it suddenly snowed in Beijing * at the weekend, the authorities asked all evacuation teams, according to local media reports, not to dump snow from residential areas with curfew in other areas. In Shanghai *, the health authorities recently locked almost 34,000 people in Disneyland without prior notice because of a suspected case in order to subject them all to a corona test. The tests were not over until after midnight, and 220 special buses brought people home. All tests were negative, but the Disneyland visitors still had to isolate themselves at home for two days and be tested a second time next week.

A district in the inland province of Jiangxi recently turned all traffic lights to red after corona cases were registered there for the first time in 600 days. The seemingly absurd measure was supposed to reduce mobility. It was ended immediately after an outcry on social media. The northern Chinese city of Shijiazhuang sent over 1,100 disinfection specialists to residential areas with isolated corona cases to sterilize all apartments there. The small town of Ruili on the border with Myanmar has had to lockdown four times in the last seven months, a total of around 200 days. Time and again, people had brought the virus from Myanmar over the porous border in the jungle. Such reports abound.

The provinces in the north-east and north-west are currently hardest hit, but with only between 100 and 200 cases each since the start of the latest wave.

Pictures and videos from there show people standing in the freezing cold for the mass tests.

The authorities in the northern Chinese city of Heihe on the border with Russia are also offering 100,000 yuan (around 13,500 euros) for information on possible sources of the outbreak there.

Anyone who has bought imported goods on the Internet should "sterilize them immediately" and send them in for tests, the city fathers demand.

They should also report smuggling or illegal fishing on the border river.

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Zero Covid policy: In the freezing cold, people in the village of Henantun, which belongs to the Heihe district, near the Chinese-Russian border, are waiting for their corona test.

© Wang Song / Imago / Xinhua

Zero Covid in China: What's Driving the Government?

The epidemiologist and most important corona advisor to the government, Zhong Nanshan, admitted on the state broadcaster

that this policy entails high costs.

But many countries would have had to reintroduce restrictions after opening up prematurely.

"In fact, this flip-flop approach is even more costly, and the psychological impact on citizens and society is greater" than consistent zero Covid, said Zhong.

An end to the zero-covid policy also depends on other countries, according to Zhang.

Only when most people worldwide have been vaccinated will the risk for China of continually importing cases decrease.

In view of the increasing number of cases in the rest of the world, the borders, which have largely been closed since spring 2020, are not expected to open until mid-2022 at the earliest.

Currently, everyone arriving has to be in hotel quarantine for at least two weeks and undergo several PCR tests.

Foreign spectators will not be allowed to enter during the Beijing Winter Olympics in February 2022.

All unvaccinated Olympic athletes must be quarantined for 21 days after arriving in Beijing.

Athletes, officials, journalists and helpers * also have to be tested daily during the games in February, regardless of whether they have been vaccinated or not.

China: Closed borders ensure isolation - and the departure of many foreigners

The long isolation caused by the closed borders not only cuts the human exchange between China and the world, which is so important in view of the tense geopolitical situation. President Xi Jinping has not left the country since the pandemic began - he was also not at the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow *. The zero-covid policy also makes it de facto impossible for expats working in China to fly home to visit their families at Christmas - for the second year in a row. There are practically no more foreign students coming to China. Employees of foreign companies are considering permanent departure.

It is therefore becoming increasingly difficult for international companies to fill jobs in China with people from their home country.

According to a survey by the EU Chamber of Commerce in China (EUCCC) in June, 73 percent of the companies surveyed saw problems with the corona policy *.

There were similar polls from the American Chamber of Commerce (Amcham).

The two presidents of the Amcham in Beijing and Shanghai, Ker Gibbs and Alan Beebe, will

now turn their backs on the Zero Covid policy

, according to a report in the

China.

China: Even domestic travel becomes a planning risk

Because of the tough corona policy, employees of European companies also left the country, says Ioana Kraft, EUCCC managing director in Shanghai to Merkur.de *. “Even domestic travel is becoming more and more difficult because of Zero-Covid, which is causing great uncertainty,” says Kraft. Recently, all passengers on a high-speed train from Shanghai and from the nearby city of Jiaxing on the way to Beijing were suddenly quarantined for two weeks at a stopover because individual people on the trains had contact with Covid patients.

If you travel to a city in which corona cases are detected during your stay, you have to return to quarantine with the entire family, according to Kraft.

"The children can then no longer go to school." Many events are also canceled at short notice.

That makes planning practically impossible and wears down many people in the long run.

The fact that German expats are expecting the fourth corona wave at home does not play a role when considering leaving the country, says Kraft.

China: First doubts about the zero-Covid strategy

So far, the Chinese have been relatively stoic about the zero-covid policy. Concern about diseases is pronounced in the population, which has always kept the acceptance of the measures high. But now some Chinese seem tired too. Videos from the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu show citizens fleeing into the bushes over fences to avoid a mass test in cold, wet weather, which was scheduled because of a single case in a huge office building.

The first experts also express doubts: It will not be possible to eradicate the virus completely, said Guan Yi from the State Key Laboratory of Emerging Infectious Diseases of the South Chinese University of Shantou to the Hong Kong broadcaster

on Monday

.

Instead of constantly ordering mass tests, the authorities should rather regularly check the level of immunization in the population.

If local authorities continued to respond with zero tolerance to dispersed cases, "I think the economy will collapse," Guan said.

The virus has gained a foothold in mankind and will remain: "That is a fact, whether we like it or not." The authorities have not yet subscribed to this point of view.

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