Regions like Shanghai and Jilin province have recently reported large-scale resurgences of the Omicron variant. Shanghai has conducted mass nucleic acid testing and imposed a lockdown in two phases on both sides of the Huangpu River, facing an unprecedented challenge from Covid-19 as China’s largest city. At the same time, residents in Shanghai and Changchun have found it difficult to buy food and get medical treatment. Tragically, some residents and medical personnel have lost their lives due to lack of timely medical treatment. All these have emphasized the importance and urgency of guaranteeing people’s livelihood during the fight against Covid-19. Government officials in both cities have apologized and said that they would accept the criticism and work harder to combat the pandemic. Guaranteeing people’s livelihood amid the fight against Covid-19 should be based on science, the market and information transparency. The universal phenomena such as putting too much stock in the implementation process and a “one-size-fits-all” approach during pandemic prevention and control must be rectified.
The pandemic is still spreading around the world, mutating continuously. However, some countries and regions have eased or even lifted the restrictions. As a result, China will face greater pressure in preventing imported cases for a long time. To address the challenge, governments at all levels should make a long-term plan to guarantee people’s livelihoods during the pandemic. Only if they have enough food and have access to medical treatment can residents rest easy, and only then can the prevention and control measures be implemented thoroughly. Guaranteeing people’s livelihood should be an integral part rather than a subsidiary measure.
China recently reported a large number of daily locally transmitted cases. All regions have stepped up containment measures in the race against the highly contagious and more concealed Omicron variant. Meanwhile, governments at all levels have been concerned about stabilizing growth and guaranteeing people’s livelihood. It is highly praiseworthy that Shanghai issued the Policy Measures of Shanghai for Combating Covid-19, Facilitating Business and Promoting Development. The city has introduced policies to ease the impact on businesses, including tax reimbursement and cuts, cost reduction and profit improvement, rent reduction, financial subsidy, financial support, enterprise assistance and employment stabilization. These policies will not only help enterprises turn the corner but also effectively guarantee the supply of medical and daily necessities for residents. However, though these policies have been implemented, the operation of businesses and residents’ lives in many regions remain in deep waters. The reasons are thought-provoking. Many regions have put too much stock in implementing containment measures or adopted a “one-size-fits-all” approach. Some officials lack trust in the market and rely heavily on the “visible hand.” In addition, information transparency amid the pandemic fight also needs be improved.
The dynamic zero-Covid policy has been developed by the Chinese government based on China’s basic characteristics such as a huge population and insufficient medical facilities. According to the head of the National Health Commission, it is a dynamic policy because we are never in pursuit of absolute zero infections; it is a zero-case policy, indicating that we will go all out to handle every confirmed case and, as a basic requirement, prevent large-scale resurgence. Obviously, many regions are pursuing absolute zero infections. Amid the current context of the global spread of Covid-19 and the continuous mutation of the virus, it is difficult to achieve absolute zero infections, and it will lead to a waste of a lot of manpower, materials and financial resources. Governments at all levels should have a unified understanding of the principle of a “fast and precise response.” Decision-making must be based on a scientific understanding of the pandemic.
Our great achievements in the reform and opening up speak volumes for the might of the market. China has long broken free from the era when there were not enough supplies. The reason for the problem of “difficulty in green grocery shopping” in some regions is not that there is no food on sale, but that supplies cannot reach the consumer because of the one-size-fits-all approach and excessive steps taken by local management authorities at different levels. In the final analysis, to safeguard people’s livelihoods, we must trust and rely on the market. In the more than the two years since the outbreak of Covid-19, e-commerce models such as express delivery and takeout have become an important channel to support the normal operation of the economy and society in the regular pandemic prevention and control. In response to this round of outbreaks, intensifying prevention and control measures is imperative. However, some regions implemented excessively restraining measures aimed at major transport channels including express delivery, takeout and trucks, resulting in insufficient material transportation capacity that made people’s life inconvenient and difficult. The State Council’s Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism against Covid-19 recently launched targeted traffic control for trucks, which is an important measure to stabilize the national market, and all regions across the country should strictly conform to it.
The inevitable requirement for scientific, targeted and market-based prevention and control is to deepen the opening up, so it is essential for China to step up imports of Covid-19 vaccines and drugs. Shanghai’s policy document states that more efforts should be made to enhance the reserve and supply of anti-epidemic materials, improve the capacity for rapid nucleic acid testing, strengthen the construction and financing of centralized quarantine facilities, support the import of vaccines and therapeutic drugs, guide and support enterprises to participate in building up the anti-epidemic emergency capacity and have a good reserve of backup medical resources. These measures are not only applicable to Shanghai. Expanding the import of vaccines and drugs is a requisite for China to win the protracted battle against the pandemic.
In addition to ensuring people’s livelihoods, unhindered information dissemination should also be valued. Since the outbreak, governments at all levels have frequently held conferences, which has delivered effective results. But simply relying on official information channels is far from enough. Social media has also played a certain role in pandemic containment, but the content it spreads is mixed. Therefore, the mainstay of information dissemination is still the mass media with profound credibility. Well-known research by Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate in economics, showed that famine is rarely caused by the lack of food but largely by the loss of trading rights, distorted distribution mechanisms and the poor flow of information. This insight is instructive for us in deliberating on the protection of people’s livelihood amidst pandemic prevention. Some residents in Shanghai and Changchun have no access to vegetables, while vegetable growers outside these regions cannot have their vegetables transported to other places and can only leave their vegetables to rot or ask for help on social-media. This is distressing news.
After more than two years of epidemic prevention and control, people have gained an in-depth understanding of the virus and gone through the initial panic stage. China is relentlessly adjusting and optimizing its prevention and control strategies. Decisions should be made with due consideration for science and the role of the market, and promote wider opening up. Improving information transparency can help us achieve the maximum effect of prevention and control at the minimum cost. We must coordinate epidemic prevention and control with economic and social development, and truly put people and their lives above everything else
Get our weekly free Must-Read newsletter.
