The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

China wants to return to "covid-19 zero" within its borders

2021-12-06T16:05:15.678Z


As the world grapples with the new omicron variant, China is more determined than ever to return to "covid-19 zero" within its borders.


Unworthy in China the sacrifice of a dog by covid-19 4:43

Editor's Note: A version of this article appeared in the CNN newsletter Meanwhile in China, an update three times a week that explores what you need to know about the country's rise and how it impacts the world.

Subscribe here.

(CNN) -

As the world grapples with the new omicron variant of the new coronavirus, China is more determined than ever to eliminate COVID-19 within its borders, but has failed to achieve that ambitious goal in the past seven weeks.

Since October 17, China has reported at least one case of local transmission every day, as local outbreaks continue to appear one after another with increasingly shorter intervals.

  • Protests in several European countries against the new restrictions due to covid-19

Although the number of cases is negligible compared to many countries - including the United States, which reports an average of more than 100,000 new cases a day - the relentless outbreaks highlight the growing challenge China faces in maintaining the zero infections.

For more than a year, China has been very efficient in containing local outbreaks with massive testing, sudden lockdowns, surveillance, and extensive quarantines, all while keeping the border tightly sealed.

advertising

This Chinese city is at the center of a covid outbreak 2:04

Not a single death since January thanks to "covid-19 zero"

As proof of the success of these measures, since the end of January, not a single death related to covid-19 has been registered in the country.

However, lately the authorities have resorted to increasingly strict measures, quarantining not only residents who have been in direct contact with an infected person, but also secondary contacts and people who are in the same area general at approximately the same time.

In the past seven weeks, nearly 10,000 tourists were trapped in Inner Mongolia for a week, after a lockdown was imposed for dozens of cases;

Shanghai Disneyland was closed for a single confirmed case known to have visited the park;

high-speed trains stopped midway to Beijing when close contacts of confirmed cases were found among crew members;

and some local covid-19 prevention workers even killed pets while disinfecting their homes while their owners were away in quarantine.

These strict measures finally succeeded in reducing infections to zero in those specific locations, but not for long.

Operation seeks to mobilize protesters in the US 1:13

In the past week, more than 300 cases have been recorded in Inner Mongolia, this time in Manzhouli, a crucial step on the border with Russia.

The local government imposed a sudden lockdown and the city is conducting a ninth round of massive tests for its more than 150,000 residents, but this is not fast enough in the eyes of higher authorities.

Huge pressure on local authorities

Over the weekend, the city fired two officials for their "slow and weak response" to the outbreak: one for delaying the transfer and quarantine of more than 100 close contacts, and the other for his mismanagement of quarantine hotels. state media reported.

Four other officials were criticized for their mediocre performance.

Local officials across China have been fired or punished for failing to contain the covid-19 outbreaks.

The goal of keeping contagions to zero has put enormous pressure on local authorities, who have often been forced to impose unnecessarily draconian measures, sometimes at the cost of disrupting daily life.

While Chinese public opinion seems to continue to support the government's "covid-19 zero" policy, excessive local measures have sparked discontent and criticism in some regions, such as the border city of Ruili, in the southwest of the country, and the prefecture of Ili, in Xinjiang.

In addition to Inner Mongolia, in the last week cases have been detected in the country's largest cities, from Beijing and Shanghai to Guangzhou.

Heilongjiang, Shaanxi, Hebei and Yunnan provinces also reported cases.

Operation seeks to mobilize protesters in the US 1:13

China continues to be one of the last countries trying to keep "covid-19 zero", while the rest of the world learns to live with it.

But the arrival of the omicron variant has prompted countries to rush to impose travel restrictions and, if anything, reinforced China's intention to keep its borders tightly closed.

(At the moment, China has not yet detected cases with the omicron variant).

A recent study by mathematicians at the prestigious Beijing University found that China could face more than 630,000 COVID-19 infections a day if it abandoned its zero-tolerance policies by lifting travel restrictions, which "almost certainly any security would induce an unaffordable burden on the medical system, "according to the report.

It concluded that China should not abandon zero tolerance to covid-19 for the time being, until there are "more effective vaccines or a more specific treatment, preferably a combination of both."

Over the weekend, Zhong Nanshan, one of China's leading experts on respiratory diseases and an adviser to the government, proposed two prerequisites for lifting the zero tolerance approach: One is that the COVID-19 fatality rate drops to around the 0.1%, and the other is that the basic number of covid reproduction falls between 1 and 1.5, which means that each infected person will spread the virus to an average of 1 to 1.5 people in a susceptible population.

In August, researchers studying an outbreak of the delta variant in Guangdong province estimated the baseline delta breeding number to be 6.4, much higher than that of the coronavirus variant first detected in Wuhan.

The World Health Organization states that it is not yet clear whether the new omicron variant is more transmissible than the delta.

ChinaCovid-19

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2021-12-06

You may like

Trends 24h

News/Politics 2024-03-28T06:04:53.137Z

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.