Beijing, Shanghai Outbreaks Renew Debate Over China’s Covid-19 Strategy
By Sha Hua, May 2, 2022, WSJ

The people working at China’s CDC said employees have been told by
superiors to refrain from publicly criticizing or raising alternatives
to China’s Covid-19 strategy to avoid undermining the morale of officials and ordinary Chinese in fighting Covid-19. Behind closed doors, however,
some top-level public health experts in China have argued that the current zero-tolerance approach is unsustainable, the people said.

On April 25, members of the National Health Commission and China’s CDC discussed in an internal meeting the lessons learned from Shanghai’s travails & the need to explore home quarantine for mild & asymptomatic
cases, said one of the people. That would represent a loosening of
China’s current practice of sending anyone who tests positive, regardless
of severity, to designated quarantine facilities.

Hu Xijin, the former top editor of nationalist tabloid Global Times & a
widely followed commentator, laid out the stakes in a recent post,
describing Beijing’s ability to contain the current wave of cases as a make-or-break moment for China’s “zero-Covid” approach.

He told his 24 million followers that the outcome in Beijing will
show whether “Omicron is so powerful that it can break through any human-erected barrier”—or whether Shanghai simply made preventable mistakes. If Beijing can’t control the current outbreak, he added,
“then the Chinese understanding of the virus will likely be reshaped.” China’s economy is already paying the price, and many economists are
now skeptical the country will be able to achieve its 5.5% growth
target this year if it sticks to its strict Covid-19 approach, even
as Mr. Xi pushes for China to top the U.S. in gross domestic product
growth this year.

Shanghai’s struggle against rising Covid-19 infections upended a
fledgling experiment with adapting the approach earlier in the year.
In February, Shanghai and the southern tech hub Shenzhen were given
leeway to experiment with more-targeted and less-intrusive measures
to bring local outbreaks under control.

While Shenzhen quickly returned to normalcy, Shanghai has tallied
hundreds of thousands of infections and several hundred deaths and
remains mired in a lockdown with no clear exit date.

Public-health experts, after studying their two different outcomes,
concluded that a swift and short lockdown together with mass testing
early on in the outbreak allowed Shenzhen to bring Covid-19 under
control, according to the people working for China’s CDC.

Shanghai, by contrast, let time pass while public-health experts
and officials argued over whether to lock down the entire city and
whether it should allow home quarantine, the people said. Eventually
Sun Chunlan, China’s vice premier in charge of pandemic control,
delivered Beijing’s decision to impose strict measures. By then,
numbers were snowballing. “It was once a battle that was hard and
costly to win,” said one of the people. “Now it becomes one that is
almost impossible to win.”

Beijing raced to carry out citywide testing late last month two days
after cases began surging, hoping to snuff out the nascent outbreak
before numbers would explode. Shanghai, in contrast, waited around
two weeks before implementing a citywide screening.

Eager to avoid the logistical breakdowns that have plagued Shanghai’s lockdown, authorities have assured residents that food supply is ample
after residents stocked up on food and other necessities in preparation
for a potential lockdown. On Tuesday, Beijing announced it would start releasing 100 tons of eggs from its strategic reserves to meet public demand.

Many Chinese are still frightened of getting infected and not ready
for controls to be eased, said the people working for China’s CDC,
adding that there had been discussion of educating the broader public
on Omicron’s tendency to cause mostly mild or no symptoms.

Some public-health officials have warned people not to let down their
guards, saying that Omicron is still seven to eight times more deadly
than the flu. Other officials emphasize the need to get over the fear
of Omicron. Public-health experts agree China needs to do more to
vaccinate the elderly and most vulnerable.

Maintaining stability is paramount for Xi, who has presented China’s pandemic performance so far—with relatively lower infections and
deaths—as proof that its approach is superior to that of the West.
An editorial in the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece People’s
Daily last week pointed to the declining number of new infections
in Shanghai as proof the zero-tolerance approach was working.
Still, some public-health officials are pushing for some small
easing measures, for example, monitoring the case count in the
coastal city of Xiamen, where quarantine time for incoming international travelers was shortened in early April, according to the people working
for China’s CDC. Some cities also are debating whether they can cut the number of isolation days for close contacts of infected people, they said.
Home quarantine also has been on the table, the people said, at least
for mild and asymptomatic cases and close contacts, and when their
living conditions permit it. But some public-health experts worry that
making sure patients meet the criteria and follow the rules might tie up
more resources than simply sending them to centralized quarantine facilities, they said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/beijing-shanghai-outbreaks-renew-debate-over-chinas-covid-19-strategy-11651430825

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