China says the current outbreak of Covid-19 is coming under control with cases in Shanghai showing signs of turning around, as officials defend the nation’s strict Covid Zero strategy as still the best against the pandemic.
The unwavering adherence to its zero tolerance approach has led to the effective control of the outbreak in the northeastern province of Jilin and initial success in curbing omicron’s spread in Shanghai, where the strategy underwent “its most severe test,” Li Bin, the deputy director of China’s National Health Commission, said in Beijing on Friday.
Shanghai reported a slight uptick in infections for the first time in six days, though the broad trend continues downward a month into a lockdown that at its peak saw most of the city’s 25 million residents confined to their homes. Now, just a fifth of the population remain unable to leave their homes.
The number of infections found in the community dropped to 108 on Thursday from 250 a week ago, according to the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission. China generally requires community spread to reach zero before it considers an outbreak contained.
Jilin, the center of an earlier outbreak, continues to gradually lift restrictions for its 24 million people, with infections no longer detected outside of quarantine facilities. A smaller outbreak in Beijing also shows signs of being under control with a mass-testing drive not yet finding signs of broad community spread.
The capital reported 34 local cases in the 24 hours ended 3 p.m. on Friday. The district of Chaoyang has shut cinemas, galleries and museums while a third round of mass testing is underway. Officials urged residents not to travel outside Beijing or gather during the upcoming Labor Day holiday, while everyone will need to have a negative PCR test result within 48 hours in order to return to work after the break.
At the briefing in Beijing, senior health officials credited the moderating outbreak to the Covid Zero strategy, which has come under sustained criticism from the tens of millions of people under lockdown who have struggled to access basic necessities like foods and healthcare, and further strained global supply chains.
Yet officials admit the Covid Zero strategy, largely abandoned by earlier proponents such as Australia, New Zealand and Singapore in the global pivot to learning to live with the virus, needs to be adjusted to keep up with omicron’s greater transmissibility and to minimize the social and economic fallout.
What Bloomberg Economics says:
China’s growth outlook is deteriorating sharply. Lockdowns in Shanghai and other parts of the country are adding to pain. In our new base case, with the government sticking with its Covid Zero strategy, growth for the year comes in at 3.6%. That’s down from our forecast of 5.1% in late March and substantially below the 5.5% target for the year.
Click here for full report.
Covid Zero will give China time to improve vaccination rates among the elderly people and other vulnerable people, increase hospital capacity and develop and produce more antivirals before declaring an ultimate triumph over Covid-19, officials said.
“There are lessons we can learn from what Shanghai has gone through and what Beijing is tackling in the Covid outbreaks,” Liang Wannian, head of the expert panel of the Covid outbreak response taskforce at the National Health Commission, said at the briefing. “The virus is spreading fast. The way we respond to it is to be even faster and more forceful. We need to race against the virus.”
Nevertheless, in an interview with news site The Market, Joerg Wuttke, president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China, blasted the government’s handling of the latest outbreaks.
“The authorities do not inform that the omicron variant is milder, they do not inform that other countries have learned to live with the virus,” Wuttke said. “The political leadership can’t admit, so close to the party congress, that there is another way in dealing with Covid.”
“They are prisoners of their own narrative. It’s rather tragic: China was the first to get into the pandemic, and it’s the last to get out,” he said. “And in the meantime, they’ve been telling the whole world that they’re the best.”
The dogged adherence to Covid Zero has prompted hard-line responses by cities at the merest sign of Covid flareups in recent days to avoid the social and economic dislocation endured by Shanghai.
Hangzhou, an e-commerce hub a short train ride from Shanghai, started a mass testing drive earlier this week. Schools in Beijing will start their Labor Day holiday early, and don’t have a firm return date. And the port city of Qinhuangdao, along with Yiwu -- known for its production of Christmas decorations -- have gone into full or partial lockdowns.
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
