How China is fighting pandemic-era Covid: State-run media blasts of Xi Jinping and the future of the Communist Party
Daily Covid counts have more than doubled in the past week, to around 1,400 cases on Friday, in the country of 1.4 billion people — a tally that remains tiny by global standards. But Chinese authorities are under immense pressure to ensure that nothing disrupts the party congress, which starts Oct. 16. They have responded by increasing the restrictions that they already have. They are locking down regions and cities and mandating mass testing and quarantines, disrupting life for millions of people and drawing public complaints.
Fighting back tears, she shouts abuse at the hazmat-suited workers below in a video that has recently gone viral on social media platform Weibo and which appears to encapsulate the Chinese public’s growing frustration with their government’s uncompromising zero-Covid policy.
A woman is yelling at workers as she yells for half a year since she returned from university. They stare back at each other.
While most Asian economies – even those with previously hardline zero-Covid stances – are abandoning pandemic-era restrictions, authorities in China remain zealous in theirs, repeatedly insisting this week in state-run media articles that the battle against the virus remains “winnable.”
That claim comes even as infections flare and a new strain circulates just days before the country’s most important political event, the Communist Party Congress beginning in Beijing on Sunday at which Xi Jinping is expected to cement his place as the country’s most powerful leader in decades.
Observers around the world will be watching the meeting to see what the party chooses to do about the economy, which has been blamed for causing a collapsing housing market and stalling growth by its zero- Covid stance.
The Xi-Bao protest, or “Say no to Covid test, yes to food, and a freedom for the Chinese people”
There is a lot of tension in Beijing, where online photos posted Thursday appeared to show a rare public protest against the president. “Say no to Covid test, yes to food. No to a restriction of freedom. Yes, to honor and dignity. No to cultural revolution, yes to reform. Yes, to vote, no to a great leader. One banner was hung over an overpass that read “Don’t be a slave, be a citizen” despite the heightened security surrounding the Congress.
Weibo, a Twitter-like platform, immediately censored search results for “Sitong Bridge,” the site of the protest. Key words such as “Beijing”, “Haidian”, and “brave man” were restricted from being searched.
Several accounts have been banned from Weibo after they commented on the protest.
Still, many spoke out to express their support and awe. Some shared a Chinese pop hit called “Lonely Warrior” in reference to the protester who some dubbed a hero, while others said “I saw it.”
Yet even in the face of rising public discontent, all the signs suggest Xi and his party plan to stick with the zero-Covid approach, possibly into 2023, with the state media articles this week serving to dampen speculation the country may change tack post-Congress.
As authorities tighten measures again, people in the city of 25 million are on edge, having already been through two months of the strictest lock down in the world.
China reported 7,451 new infections on Monday, bringing the nation’s total to 372,763 — more than double the level on Oct. 1. It has more deaths than the US, with 5,235.
Chinese response to the recent outbreak of the BF.7 coronavirus in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, and far western Xinjiang
Some people in the city have reportedly been getting some drinking water from other sources because they were afraid of an unpredictable snap lock down.
The panic buying worsened after the announcement that the water authorities ofShanghai had taken action to ensure water quality after saltwater flowed into the mouths of two lakes in September.
Exactly what is driving the increase in infections is not clear, though authorities are scrambling to contain the spread of the BF.7 coronavirus strain after it was first detected in China in late September in Hohhot, the capital city of Inner Mongolia.
Despite the country’s strict curbs on outbound tourism, there has been an increase in cases in domestic tourist destinations.
More than 240,000 university students in Inner Mongolia have been locked down on campuses due to the latest outbreak, according to Zhang Xiaoying, a deputy director of the regional Department of Education. And the outbreak on campus has led to punitive action, with one university Communist Party boss being sacked after 39 students from his institution tested positive.
Then there is the situation in far western Xinjiang, where some 22 million people have been banned from leaving the region and are required to stay home. There were more than 400 new cases in Xinjiang on Thursday.
Yet amid it all, Beijing appears unwilling to move from its hardline stance. For three days this week, the state-run Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily published commentaries reiterating that China would not let its guard down.
It has kept Covid cases and deaths low in the country for the last three years. The economy and peoples mental health were wreaked by it.
China has reduced the amount of time travelers entering the country must spend in quarantine and removed a major restriction on international flights, in a sign of a limited easing of its stringent zero-Covid policy.
The Communist Party made the new measures announcement Friday after a meeting of their highest decision-making body in which they promised to maintain Covid protocols while emphasizing the need to minimize economic and social disruptions.
The public’s reaction to Covid-19 in China: State-by-State effects and the New China Public Health Commission (PHOPS)
The public backlash has arisen because of the growing challenges and heavy economic and social costs of the zero-tolerance approach.
The easing of the measures will see authorities scrap the so-called “circuit breaker” mechanism, under which China-bound flights were suspended if an airline was found to carry a certain number of passengers who tested positive for Covid upon landing.
International passengers will be required to take a pre-departure test, but this will be reduced from two to one, and the mandatory centralizedQuarantine on arrival will reduce from seven days to five days.
Markets responded well to the changes as investors were jittery due to Covid-19 restrictions. The Hang Seng climbed after the noon break, while the mainland China’s benchmark index fell.
Under the new guidelines, people who are identified as close contacts of Covid-19 cases will have shortened quarantement at centralized government-operated facilities from seven days to five days and three days at home.
The National Health Commission said on Friday that “optimization and adjusting” the rules does not amount to a relaxation of prevention and control measures.
The government reported 10,535 new domestically transmitted cases on Thursday, the highest in months, and the authorities girded for the situation to worsen.
The National Health Commission stated that the epidemic is likely to grow due to the winter and spring weather factors.
The Chinese government has changed its policy of controlling the spread of the disease, meaning that the country no longer has zero- Covid controls or health codes on metro station walls.
What Beijing can do about the loosening of measures: a frustration of some residents and a warning from their feelings of disbelief
But as many residents expressed relief and happiness at the obvious loosening of measures, some worried about its impact and questioned how the new rules would be rolled out.
“The world changed overnight, and that’s really amazing,” said Echo Ding, 30, a manager at a tech company in Beijing. “I feel like we are getting back to normal life. If I don’t get back to normal life, I might lose my mind.
How can it change so quickly? Ding asked. “It gives me the feeling that we are like fools. It is up to them. They said it’s good, so then it’s good … that’s what I feel right now. It is so unreal, but I have no choice. All I can do is watch the arrangement.
David Wang, who works for a travel website in China, said that although the changes were welcome, they had also left a feeling of disbelief in the city which has been through a number of changes this year.
He said he was very happy about the changes, but most of his friends were showing typical signs of post traumatic stress disorder.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/08/china/china-zero-covid-relaxation-reaction-intl-hnk/index.html
What the Beijing Public Health Ministry had to say about Covid-19: “It feels like a long time ago, didn’t matter what I did,” said Wang
According to top health officials in Beijing, the changes to the rules were made based on scientific evidence including the spread of the milder Omicron variant and China’s experience in responding to the virus.
But the changes, which come on the heels of a wave of unprecendented protests across the country against harsh Covid restrictions, are a swift about-face for a government long bent on stamping out all infections. While health authorities made slight policy revisions and cautioned officials against overreach last month, the central government up until last week had shown no signs of preparing for an imminent shift in its national strategy.
The government and state media had long emphasized the dangers of the virus and its potential long-term effects – and used this to justify the maintenance of restrictive policies.
Now, a flood of articles highlighting the more mild nature of Omicron and downplaying its risks have created a feeling of whiplash for some, and fall well short of the kind of public messaging campaigns that some other countries carried out before their own pandemic policy changes.
Meanwhile, experts have warned a lack of experience with the virus – and years of state media coverage focusing on its dangers and impact overseas, before a recent shift in tone – could push those who are not in critical need to seek medical care, further overwhelming systems.
There were many reports of panic buying offever medications on Weibo on Thursday morning due to topics related to what to do if Omicron is found on the Chinese mainland.
What kind of medicine people should have, and what to do if they were to become ill, weren’t explained to them. In fact, we should have started doing this a long, long time ago,” said Sam Wang, 26, a lawyer in Beijing, who added that the policy release felt “sudden and arbitrary.”
Bob Li, a graduate student in Beijing, who tested positive for the virus on Friday said he wasn’t afraid of the virus, but his mother, who lives in the countryside, stayed up all night worrying about him. Li said that she found the virus a very scary thing.
People from younger generation and people in more cosmopolitan urban areas may be more likely to back reopening the country and relaxing rules, as fears about the impact of Covid-19 within China may also play out.
Implications of a new City-wide Covid-19 Reopening for the Viral Spread of the Influenza Influenza Disorder and the Status of Public Health in China
Meanwhile, his mother was now buying high-grade N95 masks and preparing for a “nuclear winter” until a potential initial wave of cases passed, Wang said.
The guidelines are being implemented in a way that is contradictions and many are watching to see the effect in their cities.
In Beijing, authorities on Wednesday said a health code showing a negative Covid-19 test would still be required for dining in at restaurants or entering some entertainment venues – in conflict with the national guidelines.
Hao, in Beijing, said on Wednesday evening that her health code had turned yellow – which would usually bar her from entering most public places, until she queued up for another test that returned a negative result. She stayed at home and waited to see what the new rules would do.
The latest national guidelines state that mass testing across entire cities is no longer required. They say that the government should apply movement restrictions to high-risk communities, buildings and households instead of shutting down cities. People no longer have to show evidence of a negative test to travel between regions or access public transport and other venues, except for high-risk settings such as nursing homes. And the guidelines prioritize boosting the low rates of vaccination among older people.
But the government hasn’t stated the goal of its new policy, which could create confusion, says Huang. The reopening will likely lead to a messy and hasty transition process since local governments are likely to ditch all zero-COVID measures without investing in preparing for the transition.
But researchers say some aspects of the new rules are ambiguous and open to interpretation by local governments, including when and where to test people during an outbreak, what defines high-risk areas and how to manage them.
Many people in China live in densely populated high-rise buildings, where it will be difficult to limit transmission. Allowing people to quarantine at home will contribute to viral spread, says George Liu, a public-health researcher at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. This could overwhelm hospitals.
Researchers are not fond of the timing of the reopening. Hospitals are already seeing a rise in patients because of the flu season. And many people will also be travelling across the country for next month’s Lunar New Year and spring festival, further increasing viral spread, says Xi Chen, an economist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, who studies China’s public-health system.
China doesn’t have a strong system for primary medical care system, such as a network of general practitioners, so people go to hospital for mild conditions, says Xi Chen, who hopes more details on how the government plans to triage care will emerge in the coming days.
Without additional support, the eased restrictions might not help businesses to recover from protracted lockdowns or remove the social stigma attached to COVID-19, says Joy Zhang, a sociologist at the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK. I worry that the health and socio- economic risk will be passed on to individuals.
Urgent guidance is needed on how to curb transmission during a surge, such as through mask mandates, work-from-home policies and temporary school closures, says Cowling. And given the reduction in testing, it is not clear how officials will track whether cities are approaching, or have passed, the peak of an infection wave, he says.
Chinese health system facing outbreaks of zero-Covid type IIB: Unnamed experts, lines, scarcity, and emergency call surges
There is “serious vaccine hesitancy”, among older people, and a general lack of trust in medical professionals, says Liu. Many older people live in rural and remote areas so it will take time to get them vaccinations.
The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention funded the study which found that the death toll can be reduced by up to 35% if fourth-dose vaccine coverage is 85% and antiviral coverage is 40%.
A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. Sign up here.
Changes continued Monday as authorities announced a deactivation of the “mobile itinerary card” health tracking function planned for the following day.
Even if they did not go to those areas within that city, it was a point of contention for a lot of Chinese people because of concerns around data collection and the use of local governments to ban entry to people who have visited a city with a high risk zone.
But as the scrapping of parts of the zero-Covid infrastructure come apace, there are questions about how the country’s health system will handle a mass outbreak.
Media outlet China Youth Daily documented hours-long lines at a clinic in central Beijing on Friday, and cited unnamed experts calling for residents not to visit hospitals unless necessary.
Health workers in the capital were also grappling with a surge in emergency calls, including from many Covid-positive residents with mild or no symptoms, with a hospital official on Saturday appealing to residents in such cases not to call the city’s 911-like emergency services line and tie up resources needed by the seriously ill.
The daily volume of emergency calls had surged from its usual 5,000 to more than 30,000 in recent days, Chen Zhi, chief physician of the Beijing Emergency Center said, according to official media.
Vaccines for Covid-19 in China, a Chinese expert told Weibo in an interview with Xinhua
In an interview published in state media Saturday, a top Covid 19 expert said that Covid was spreading rapidly in China.
“No matter how strong the prevention and control is, it will be difficult to completely cut off the transmission chain,” Zhong, who has been a key public voice since the earliest days of the pandemic in 2020, was quoted saying by Xinhua.
The rapid reduction of testing nationwide and the shift of many people to use antigen tests at home has made it difficult to gauge the extent of the spread, despite official data now appearing meaningless.
China may have been unprepared to handle the surge of cases after it lifted its measures in the wake of nationwide protests against the policy.
Zhong, in the state media interview, said the government’s top priority now should be booster shots, particularly for the elderly and others most at risk, especially with China’s Lunar New Year coming up next month – a peak travel time where urban residents visit elderly relatives and return to rural hometowns.
Measures to be undertaken include increasing ICU wards and beds, enhancing medical staff for intensive care and setting up more clinics for fevers, China’s National Health Commission said in a statement.
China’s market watchdog said on Friday that there was a “temporary shortage” of some “hot-selling” drugs and vowed to crackdown on price gouging, while major online retailer JD.com last week said it was taking steps to ensure stable supplies after sales for certain medications surged 18 times that week over the same period in October.
A hashtag trending on China’s heavily moderated social media platform Weibo over the weekend featured a state media interview with a Beijing doctor saying people who tested positive for Covid-19 but had no or mild symptoms did not need to take medication to recover.
People with certain symptoms do not need medication. It is enough to rest at home, maintain a good mood and physical condition The CEO of Beijing You An Hospital stated in an interview that he had viewed more than 355 million times since Friday.
The knock every resident here dreads: a case study of quarantine facilities in the 1930’s in Guangzhou, China
The Editor-in-Chief of the China lifestyle magazine is called “Lars Hamer”. He has lived in China for a while. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Follow him on Twitter @LarsHamer1. CNN has more opinion on it.
It’s the knock every resident here dreads. Early Tuesday morning, a sudden loud banging at the door of my apartment in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. Instantly, fear washed over me; health care workers in hazmat suits were ordering everyone to go downstairs because a neighbor had tested positive for Covid-19.
I had a reason to be worried. One month ago a teacher friend and some of his colleagues were sent to a centralizedQuarantine after a student at his school tested positive for Covid-19. I was worried that the same would happen to me.
Nothing of the sort, to my surprise. I passed the Covid-19 test, but I didn’t impress. I was allowed to leave my house before my results came out.
If this had occurred just weeks before, I would have, like my friend, been labeled a “close contact” and therefore would have been powerless to avoid the quarantine facility’s vice-like grip.
I was in Guangzhou over the next few days and they seemed to be back to normal. There were many people in the streets. Friends and families who had not seen each other for months gathered in bars and restaurants, and QR codes were being ripped down from walls; our movements no longer tracked.
Just look at the new measure forbidding the blocking of fire exits in the event of a lockdown, for example. Now, people who are infected can isolate themselves at home. Quarantine facilities are soon to be a thing of the past.
Friends and families who had not seen each other for months gathered in bars and restaurants, and QR codes were being ripped down from walls; our movements no longer tracked.
I worked most days until late at night because it was the only thing left to do and non-essential businesses were closing. I too began to feel the strain and started considering leaving the country.
It was a complete shock to know that something was not right. Guangzhou had more than 8000 cases that day and it was just like the one that happened in Shanghai in April.
Beijing student lockouts led to public dissent over COVID-19 and a new wave of international student disruptions during January lunar new year travel
Chinese universities plan to allow students to finish the semester from home in order to prevent a larger outbreak of COVID-19 during the January lunar new year travel rush.
It wasn’t clear how many schools were taking part, but universities in Shanghai and nearby cities said students would be given the option of either returning home early or staying on campus and undergoing testing every 48 hours. The busiest travel season in China is in January when the Lunar New Year falls.
The last three years have seen a number of university campus lock outs, most of them leading to altercations between students and the authorities.
The government ended many of the strictest measures last week following three years in which it enforced some of the world’s strictest virus restrictions.
Last month in Beijing and several other cities, protests over the restrictions grew into calls for leader Xi Jinping and the Communist Party to step down — a level of public dissent not seen in decades.
The relaxation has soothed fears of a new wave of infections that could overwhelm the health care resources in some areas.
With so many people staying home, Beijing’s downtown streets were eerily quiet on Tuesday. There are small lines outside of clinics and at pharmacy where cold and flu drugs are harder to find.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/13/1142416107/china-university-students-return-home-covid
The United States is not prepared for an exit from COVID-19: Implications for the elderly, hospitals, and funeral homes of Beijing
The South’s government said Tuesday that it would remove restrictions on travelers arriving in the city that prevent them from eating in restaurants for the first three days. It would no longer use the contact-tracing app, although vaccine requirements will remain in place. The new measures take effect Wednesday.
The easing of control measures on the mainland means a sharp drop in obligatory testing from which daily infections numbers are compiled, but cases appear to be rising rapidly, with many testing themselves at home and staying away from hospitals.
China’s government-supplied figures have not been independently verified and questions have been raised about whether the ruling Communist Party has sought to minimize numbers of cases and deaths.
The State Department stated that the U.S. Consulates in the northeastern Chinese city of Shaanxi and central Chinese city of Wuhan will only offer emergency services from Tuesday in response to increased number of COVID-19 cases.
“Mission China makes every effort to provide full consular services for U.S. citizens in the People’s Republic of China, but further disruptions are possible,” an e-mailed message said.
There is a chance that the ruling party could reverse course if there is a large-scale outbreak.
The experts warn that the country is unprepared for such an exit, as they say it was not prepared enough to bolster the elderly vaccination rate, increase surge and intensive care capacity in hospitals, and stock antiviral medications.
The professors at the University of Hong Kong think that a reopening could result in up to 684 deaths per million people.
The research paper, which has yet to be reviewed by a peer, said the surge of infections would likely overload many local health systems across the country.
Lifting restrictions at the same time will lead to hospitalization demands up to 2.5 times of surge hospital capacity according to the study.
They were the first deaths reported since the dramatic easing of restrictions, but Chinese social media posts show a surge in demand for Beijing funeral homes and crematoriums in recent weeks.
An employee at a funeral home on the outskirts of Beijing told CNN they were swamped by the long queues for cremation, and customers would need to wait until at least the next day to cremate their loved ones.
The Beijing-Zhejiang epidemic: the return to work in China’s largest city after a cycle of lock-ups
The major cities have seen a surge in infections. Most of the classes have been moved online in the financial hub of Shanghai. In the southern metropolis of Guangzhou, students who are already taking online classes have been told not to prepare for a return to school.
In the megacity of Chongqing in the southwest, authorities announced on Sunday that public sector workers testing positive for Covid can go to work “as normal” – a remarkable turnaround for a city that only weeks ago had been in the throes of a mass lockdown.
Chinese experts have warned that the worst is yet to come. Wu Zunyou, the chief epidemiologist at the Chinese CDC, said the country is being hit by the first of three expected waves of infections this winter.
Speaking at a conference in Beijing on Saturday, Wu said the current wave would run until mid-January. The second wave is expected to last from January to February next year and is triggered by the mass travel ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday.
Every year, hundreds of millions of people who have left their hometowns to build a life in China’s fast growing cities pour into trains, buses and planes to see their family – a weeks-long travel rush known as the largest annual human migration on Earth.
The cities of Wuhu, Chongqing and Guiyang, and the province of Zhejiang, collectively home to more than 100 million people, all recently issued directives to public sector employees indicating a shift from preventing infection to allowing the resumption of life and work.
Zhejiang provincial and health leaders gave similar instructions at a news conference Sunday, with one official suggesting key teams consider a rotation schedule “to ensure uninterrupted work and maintain order when outbreaks are severe.” The state media said that Guiyang followed suit on Tuesday.
The push to return to work comes as China relaxes rules around testing, quarantine and other pandemic policies, in a dramatic step away from its costly zero-Covid policy.
A cycle of lock-ups has led to a plethora of problems, including record youth unemployment, supply chain disruptions and a cratering of the real estate sector that contributes 30% of China’s GDP.
A Covid Return to Work in the Intl-Hnk-mic: How Beijing Met the First Three Months of Censorship in China
“A few months ago if you went out like this, you would be sentenced,” one person commented on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, under the back-to-work announcement.
Bonnie Wang told CNN that her colleague with Covid symptoms was still working in the office this week.
Local governments had a “get out ofjail-free card” on their economic performance during the Pandemic, according to the founder of a Hong Kong-based company that uses artificial intelligence.
This shift in priority is clearly reflected in the government’s messaging, with Chinese experts and state media downplaying the severity of Omicron and instead emphasizing the importance of economic recovery.
Top leaders at the Central Economic Work Conference, a key annual meeting that ended Friday, said in a statement that stabilizing economic growth was the top priority for 2023. They also signaled that policymakers would relax their grip on the country’s private sector — a departure from the regulatory crackdown that in recent years has thrown China’s biggest private companies into chaos.
And though the economy has been struggling for several years, Manuel said China’s leaders may now feel more secure in adjusting their policy after the closely-watched Communist Party Congress in October.
Officials nationwide had worked frantically to contain Covid cases ahead of the highly sensitive twice-a-decade leadership reshuffle, which saw Chinese leader Xi Jinping emerge more powerful than ever into his third term.
But this push for economic growth comes at a cost, one already making itself clear as cases skyrocket across the country, with widespread medicine shortages and reports of crematoriums struggling to keep up.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/21/business/china-covid-return-to-work-intl-hnk-mic/index.html
“What’s the first thing the company told me about China,” a Beijing subway worker told e-Wave News on Weibo
What is the first thing the company sent him? He had a work laptop. It’s outrageous,” she said, adding that though she understood the need for business to continue, “maybe because I am a worker, I empathize most with the workers.”
Due to China not celebrating Christmas and the fear of a wave of cases, the subway systems and streets have emptied in recent weeks, which is unusual for this time of year.
The Beijing metro said in a post online that the subway had just 2.21 million passengers on Monday, which was less than the average daily weekday use from early October to early December. Similar drops were also reported in other major cities.
The top post was written on Weibo and stated that the policy was very irresponsible from the local government. “Asymptomatic and mildly ill patients can still be contagious … and many people have elderly relatives and children at home.”
The decision to prioritize the economy over workers was criticized by some and they demanded that their superiors be held to the same expectation.