hong kong
CNN
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China has given its most significant sign yet that the country may try to adjust its strict zero-Covid policy that has upended daily life, brought its economy to a halt and caused a wave of panic in recent days. Is. Protest across the country.
Top official in charge of China’s Covid response told health officials On Wednesday the country faced a “new phase and mission” in epidemic control.
According to the state, China’s Vice Premier Sun Chunlan said on Wednesday, “With the decreasing toxicity of the Omicron variant, increasing vaccination rates and growing experience in outbreak control and prevention, China’s epidemic prevention faces (a) new phase and mission.” It happens.” Media Xinhua.
The remarks follow a rise in public frustration with China restrictive zero-covid policy And its high human cost, which has turned into unprecedented demonstrations in at least 17 cities since last Friday.
Sun – who has been the face of the Chinese Communist Party’s policy implementation – made no mention of “zero-Covid”, as reported by Xinhua. His comments came a day after a separate body of top health officials promised to improve Some approach to Covid control and said that local governments should “respond to the reasonable demands of the public and resolve them in a timely manner”.
Minor adjustments to regulations and some easing of lockdown measures in major Chinese cities in recent days, as well as high-level statements, suggest China is taking a closer look at its policy, which has become increasingly disruptive as It is struggling to combat the highly transmissible coronavirus. Variant and record case no.
But the shifting tone has not come with any road map mentioning an end goal or a move away from a zero-Covid policy, and it is uncertain how this will affect realities on the ground or ease growing public desperation.
Thousands of buildings and residential communities in China’s 32 cities classified as “high risk” are subject to lockdown restrictions as of Thursday.
Local officials may be reticent to let cases rise for fear of retribution from the central government, which has long prided itself on its zero-Covid stance. Meanwhile, experts say the country is lagging behind in key areas of preparedness for a wider outbreak.
Chinese health officials and experts have long argued that the cost of a zero-Covid policy is scientifically justified, citing uncertainties including the long-term effects of how the virus will evolve in the future, as well as gaps in medical preparedness giving a lagging elderly vaccination rate and Inadequate intensive care infrastructure – especially in rural areas.
These weaknesses, he warned, could overwhelm the healthcare system if the virus spread freely in the country of 1.4 billion – a situation that could increase the expected deaths with an opening.
This remains a major concern for the government, according to Nicholas Thomas, a health security expert at the City University of Hong Kong, who said: “There is still a large part of the population that is trusting the government’s actions in tackling the virus. An unmanaged engagement with the virus could not only erode that trust, it could also expose vulnerable populations (to risk).
Recent comments around the policy are “not a sign that China is ready to transition to live with Covid, but a sign that the virus is out of control and the government is unable to return to a zero-Covid environment”. is,” he said.
Case numbers have been hovering around record highs over the past week, with more than 35,000 new cases reported on Wednesday – posing a major challenge to efforts to bring case numbers back down to low levels.
Observers say that instead of preparing for the widespread spread of the virus as the top priority, China has focused on building the infrastructure and manpower needed to maintain zero-Covid, which has been achieved through lockdowns, mass testing and a reduction in both cases and near-zero levels. Relies on forced quarantine of contacts.
According to Alfred Wu, associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, one reason for this has been the government’s own narrative about its success and the endorsement of the policy by leader Xi Jinping.
After bringing its initial outbreak in Wuhan under control in 2020, China’s border restrictions and quick method of detecting and suppressing the virus allowed the country to remain relatively virus-free, while the rest of the world was overwhelmed by hospital sick and dying. Were full of people. patients. According to China’s official count, it has seen only 5,233 Covid-19 deaths since the beginning of 2020, with fewer than 600 reported in 2022.
Xi has Explained China’s measures And its relatively low number of Covid deaths came as a triumph of Chinese rule. The country clung to that system even after mass vaccination and the spread of the milky way others transitioned to live with the virus, but the highly contagious Omicron variant. However, Omicron made China’s controls more disruptive and less effective.
“The number one (reason) is propaganda – they want to claim that China is doing a much better job than the United States,” Wu said. – As Xi has emphasized state security as a key policy goal.
But by following this strategy, China “missed so many golden opportunities” to prepare to live with the virus and prepare the public for massive COVID-19 deaths, he said.
One concern is the low level of booster vaccinations in the elderly population most vulnerable to COVID-19 – a weakness that health officials on Tuesday launched a new plan to address.
According to state media, as of 11 November, 40% of China’s population over 80 had received a booster shot, while nearly two-thirds had received two doses – a result of both vaccine hesitancy and early vaccine roll-outs that did not priority given to the elderly
A World Health Organization advisory group recommended last year that elderly people taking China’s inactivated-virus vaccines receive three doses in their initial course to ensure adequate protection. The safety of the vaccine tends to decline over time and tends to decrease with the Omicron variant.
Meanwhile, China’s immunity rests almost entirely on vaccination because very few people have been exposed to the virus. About 90% of the population is fully vaccinated. While China’s vaccines have been shown to protect against severe disease and death, studies suggest they provide less antibody protection than mRNA vaccines widely used elsewhere in the world. Beijing has not yet approved any mRNA vaccine,
A stark warning of the risks to the mainland appeared in Hong Kong, where low vaccination rates among the group most at risk played a role in further escalation. Last spring, the Chinese region had one of the highest COVID-19 death rates in the world.
While vaccination will not end the rise in deaths when restrictions are eased, shots and boosters, as well as other preparations to reduce risk, are vital for countries moving away from policies aimed at “zero-Covid” , according to infectious disease physician Peter Collignon of the Australian National University Medical School.
“Preparedness isn’t just vaccines, it’s surge capacity, making sure you have enough hospital staff, you have enough beds and especially making sure the elderly (are safe),” he said. .
China has indicated it may make a more concerted effort to bolster its defenses against the virus. Officials on Tuesday released an action plan to boost elderly vaccination rates. It echoed a goal outlined in a 20-point plan to adapt zero-covid measures released last month, which also asked hospitals to ramp up intensive treatment facilities and stockpile anti-viral drugs and medical equipment.
The same notice also eased some measures related to testing and quarantining, and warned against excesses in policy enforcement at the local level – all messages that have been echoed by top health officials in recent days.
Following that guidance – and in the wake of recent protests – state media have highlighted the construction of several cities. Minor changes to their policies, largely around testing and quarantine rules.
On Wednesday, authorities in the southern center of Guangzhou eased a lockdown on four districts and eased a quarantine requirement. in Xinjiang’s Urumqi on Saturday local officials said They will gradually ease lockdown measures in neighborhoods classified as “low risk” and move to reopen essential businesses and public transport the next day.
protests across the country A deadly fire was sparked in Urumqi on 24 November, where at least 10 people died, and videos of the incident appeared to show lockdown measures delayed firefighters reaching victims . They join a list of deaths that have been widely linked in the public conversation to Covid-19 controls.
On China’s heavily moderated social media, a topic discussing Omicron’s comparative “reduction in pathogenicity” was trending Thursday — a possible sign that authorities, after years of focusing on its risks, are trying to stop the spread of the virus. aims to change public perceptions about
But some social media users remained skeptical, saying the changes to testing requirements were too minor to minimize the zero-Covid impact on daily life.
And at least one city, Jinzhou in northeastern China, pushed back against the adjustments other cities have made, saying in a notice on Thursday that it would not prematurely ease measures and abandon its progress from the ongoing outbreak, adding Although the coronavirus is still better than not having “(the virus).”
Experts say that the real test of the country’s direction is yet to be seen in the coming months.
Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow in global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said that if the emphasis on vaccination and other proposed measures to boost medical preparedness are “seriously implemented”, China will have ” way forward for the future”. “But so far they have not been prioritized in the implementation process.”
Another problem is the disconnect between Beijing’s policies and how they are implemented by local governments. are under pressure to control case numbers for fear of being removed from their posts – a routine punishment in the past for officials who allowed outbreaks to spread.
Huang said, “If you open up and make a mess, there will be trouble.” “You have to change the incentive structure of local governments before you can introduce any meaningful change,” he said.