While the situation in the once-seriously-affected Covid-19-hit countries is slowly getting back to normalcy, China is struggling hard to control the rising cases now. The situation is becoming worse every passing day.
There are two apparent reasons for the Chinese woes. First, Beijing's much-touted 'Zero Covid' policy has failed to achieve the expected outcome. And second is the inefficacy of Chinese vaccines against coronavirus.
What is China's zero COVID policy?
China has clung to a zero-tolerance approach to the virus that relies on stringent lockdowns, mass testing and quarantine in government facilities.
The Zero-Covid policy measures include aggressive contact tracing, isolation of infected people, quarantine of their close contacts, large-scale nucleic acid testing and domestic travel restrictions from high-risk areas.
Earlier, Chinese President Xi Jinping has said that Beijing will stick to its "Zero Covid-19" policy, days after National Health Commission (NHC) released new guidelines easing its control measures.
A two-phase lockdown of Shanghai’s 26 million people is testing the limits of China’s hard-line “Zero-COVID” strategy, which is shaking markets far beyond the country’s borders.
The new omicron BA.2 subvariant is widely blamed for bringing a new surge in cases to Shanghai.
Analysts say that the local governments in China are facing a growing financial burden to meet Beijing’s hardline zero-COVID strategy, according to a think tank, Policy Research Group (POREG).
During the COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China, the government of China has followed a Zero COVID strategy to prevent the spread of COVID-19. After the discovery of a cluster of patients with pneumonia of unknown aetiology in Wuhan, Hubei Province, a public notice on the outbreak was distributed on 31 December 2019.
By the summer of 2020, China had largely brought the outbreak under control, ending widespread community transmission. After the initial outbreak, lockdowns and other restrictive measures were eased throughout China.
Impact of latest outbreak:
The latest outbreak has impacted almost every corner of China. Authorities are implementing the 'Zero Covid' policy strictly, which has disrupted food and medicine supplies, manufacturing and retail business. Yet, the cases are rising, thus frustrating the authorities as well as the locked-out residents. Notably, over 85 per cent of the Chinese population is vaccinated.
People are blaming the government and vaccine companies for mismanagement and are protesting against forced vaccination. "The testing agencies want this to go on. The vaccine companies want to inoculate forever," said a Chinese citizen on the social media platform WeChat. Another Chinese citizen Lau said he was feeling helpless. "There's nothing we can do. We don't know when it's going to end, clients are on the verge of cancelling orders, supplies are dwindling and employees can't get to work," he said.
The frustration regarding the failure of the 'Zero Covid' policy is growing among authorities as well. Jilin provincial health commission official Zhang Yan accepted there was mismanagement in tackling the virus infection.
"The emergency response mechanism in some areas is not robust enough, there is insufficient understanding of the characteristics of the Omicron variant and judgment has been inaccurate," Yan said.
The Chinese population is still quite far from achieving herd immunity. In such a scenario, only an effective vaccine appears to be the only solution. However, the Chinese vaccines are failing in their objectives. Rather they are becoming disastrous in some cases.
