You Kini, zero-COVID policy of nula COVID policy (2023)

December 20th, almost two weeks since thenChina's sudden and unexpected abandonment of its strict "zero-covid" policy., the country has officially registered just over 3,000 cases of COVID-19. The actual number of cases that day, the National Health Commission (CNS) estimated at an internal meeting, was closer to 37 million.

According to internal meeting notes that were later leaked, the commission estimated that in the first 20 days of December,There have been about 250 million cases of COVID in China— the incredible speed of spread in a population with low immunity that was shielded from COVID for three years by policies that kept China isolated from a world already living with the virus.

December - China's first month after a zero COVID outbreak - sawa completely overburdened hospital system, as well as the wave of deaths among elderly Chinese that went unrecorded, visible only inlong lines in front of the crematoriumall over the country. INPekingand Shanghai, some families had to wait up to 10 days to get a place in the crematorium.

If China had more than two years to prepare for the lifting of COVID-restrictions, the end of COVID-zero came so suddenly and abruptly thathospitals and medical professionals were stunned.On the night of November 30, the first clear sign of a change in policy appeared when the Deputy Prime Minister and the "COVID Tsar"Sun Chunlan met with NHC officialsand declared that Omicron was no longer a threat due to its “reduced pathogenicity”. However, authorities in several Chinese cities, including Beijing, were still scrambling to build more quarantine facilities that day, projects that were suddenly halted.

Doctors in Beijing saidoh hinduthat hospitals haven't even had time to figure out how to handle the influx of COVID patients and separate them from those seeking other treatment. Some hastily set up makeshift fever clinics to ease the burden on emergency departments. Clinics faced long queues as the city's pharmacies ran out of drugs just days after the policy was eased. They simply didn't have time to stock up.

The authorities are on December 1Wuhan released a list of 42 fever clinics, but some were soon closed because the employees themselves became infected. Cross-infection in hospitals in Beijing and other cities spread rapidly, causing other wards to be closed for disinfection.

Tension in intensive care beds was the biggest concern. In November, China had 12 million people over the age of 80 who had not yet received the three doses of the Chinese vaccine needed to avoid large-scale hospitalizations and deaths, and 80 million over the age of 60. which is from 20203.6 intensive care beds for every 1,00,000 people, with most beds concentrated in larger cities.

In September alone, China's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) hadcalled on the government to implement an additional vaccination campaign, describing it as a prerequisite for a safe exit strategy. That warning was not heeded.

Indeed, China's vaccination campaign was hampered from the start by the zero-COVID model's focus on mass testing and contact quarantine, which consumed the lion's share of medical resources. Contrary to popular perception, the problem was not the Chinese vaccines, which in Hong Kong proved highly effective in preventing hospitalization and death after three doses. The problem was the vaccination strategy.

The vaccination campaign was initially aimed at the working-age population aged 18-59, rather than the elderly. If the idea was to protect the workforce, the unintended consequence was a widespread impression that the government was not convinced of the vaccine's safety. And with no sign of an end to COVID-19, the rational choice for many seniors, who saw little chance of contracting the virus in a country with closed borders and rigorous testing, was to delay vaccination.

The sudden turnaround in November, without planning or preparation, suggested only one thing: there was never an exit strategy from a model that had worked well for China but had become a victim of its own success.

O fim do zero-COVID

Almost three years,Chinese model without COVIDhe isolated the country and its population from a virus that swept the world and claimed millions of lives. During 2020 and 2021, China was largely a COVID-free bubble. Schools in China remained open, factories busily supplied the world, and domestic tourism exploded. China's foreign trade reached record levels in 2021.

In March 2022.Shanghai has given a warning signthe growing difficulty of maintaining zero levels of COVID in the face of new highly transmissible variants, even if less lethal, mainly for those who have been vaccinated. Shanghai's COVID wave, the largest in China since the pandemic began, has sparked debate among Chinese health experts. Some in Shanghai are advocating zero displacement with COVID, and the city initially avoided quarantine and focused only on the elderly. Reports at the time suggested Beijing was angered by the softer approach and intervened directly, imposing a strict two-month quarantine on the city. Tens of thousands of Shanghai residents were taken into central quarantine, while the separation of COVID-positive children from their parents sparked protests.

The Shanghai shutdown revealed the first cracks in China's response to COVID-19, but Beijing's message at the time was unequivocal - the zero-Covid approach on which the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party had staked so much was not in question.

Chinese leaders were aware that no country in the world had achieved the transition to life with COVID without great cost. These costs were used to justify the continuation of the zero-covid approach. The issue of staying with him has also become intensely political, seen as an important achievement for the Party during President Xi Jinping's second term, due to end in October.Party Congress once every five years.

Beijing's message to all local governments was that there would be no respite from COVID-0, especially until the Congress, to ensure a grand celebration of Xi's decade in power and a smooth transition to the start of his third term. .

Communist Party officialPeople's Daily, preparing for Congress, published three editorials on consecutive days, asking for "patience with current policies" and warning that "we must adhere to zero level of COVID." He criticized those who advocated "lying down" and living with the virus.

WhenXi opened the Congress on the 10th., advocated zero-COVID as the right choice for China that showed the government "puts people's lives first." For months, partisan media have criticized the West – especially the US – for its lax approach to COVID and millions of deaths. This emphasis led to its own narrative trap – a departure from politics would be difficult for the Party to explain after three years of criticizing countries that did so.

The problem for the leadership was that public tolerance for a policy that many initially supported was rapidly waning. As restrictions tightened to control new variants, the widespread expectation was that Congress's conclusion would herald a loosening and that China would finally catch up with the world. However, in 2022, they face more and moreportable variants, China introduced more blockades than in the previous two years. Economic costs were rising. In July 2022, youth unemployment rose sharply to a record 19.9%.

In an apparent nod to these public frustrations, the government announced 20 measures to ease restrictions on November 11 following the conclusion of the all-important Congress.

For local authorities, the new measures have caused confusion; they requested a shortened quarantine period and secondary contacts should not be followed. However, for all the emphasis on relaxation, the first of these measures called for "unwavering adherence to the zero dynamics of COVID" and the elimination of infections as quickly as possible. Local authorities, however, continued to block at will. With expectations of a post-Congressional zero-clearance of COVID now debunked, public frustration continued to grow.

The spark that lit the fire

On November 24, those frustrations turned to anger. That night there was news aboutfire in a residential area in Urumqi, in western Xinjiang, which killed at least 10 people. During the night, videos of fire engines trying to put out the fire by spraying from the compound's door went viral. At that distance, as a distressed onlooker noted on video, the water barely touched the raging fire, leaving those inside, including children, to burn to death.

For millions of people who were similarly confined to their apartments, the Urumqi tragedy struck a nerve. On the weekend of November 26, Shanghai residents gathered in the city's Urumqi street for a spontaneous commemoration of those killed in the fire. The monument turned into a protest, calling for an end to the quarantine.

At the suggestion of Shanghai,residents in cities across China began to gather in similar fashionto pay tribute, an unprecedented move that, for the first time in decades, saw civil society protests in direct opposition to Beijing's policies.

More than 500 people gathered in the center of Beijing. "No more blockages, no more tests!" there was singing. The strongest voices came from young people. A student at a protest in Beijing said that three years of COVID-related policies have "stolen our youth". The protests spread to more than 50 university campuses. At Tsinghua University, Xi's alma mater,the students sang, "We need democracy, rule of law and freedom of speech!"

"We haven't seen scenes like this since 1989," said a veteran Chinese journalist.oh hindu, referring to the Tiananmen Square protests that year.

At Nanjing University of Communications in the East, students started a "blank paper" protest that spread across the country. Holding white sheets of paper, they gave them their voice as they pointed out the limitations they faced in speaking.

In Nanjing, a university official with a megaphone warned protesters that "one day they will pay for what they have done" and reminded them that the COVID measures were "state policy," according to the video. Without hesitation, one student replied, "The state will also have to pay for its actions."

the Beijing dilemma

The Communist Party faced a dilemma. As the protests grew, so did the cases across the country. At the end of November, China recorded almost 40,000 cases per day, the most since the beginning of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, local officials have sent two messages to Beijing: that the relaxed measures are not working to contain the highly transmissible virus and that a strict ban would decimate an already battered economy.

By the end of November, zero levels of COVID had passed the point of no return with cases rising. As noted by Dr. Mike Ryan of the WHO, the increase in China actually led to the end of restrictions, not the other way around.

There were signs in Beijing that the test model was close to collapse. Key to the zero-COVID model was the pooled sampling system that triggered mass testing. The idea was that, if the pooled sample were positive, the participants in the pool would later be tested individually. This allowed rapid, large-scale testing, but only succeeded when the majority of pooled samples were negative. By early December, all samples collected in Beijing were returning positive tests, putting enormous pressure on the testing and monitoring regime. The numbers were so high that even contact tracing failed.

Returning China to "zero cases" at this point would require an even stricter nationwide lockdown than that in Shanghai. This possibility was not ruled out - by the beginning of December, cities from Beijing to Guangzhou were busily building new improvised quarantine centers. What probably changed Beijing's calculus were the protests, which posed a risk to the party but also provided an opportunity and political space for it to deviate from its once non-negotiable stance of a zero-sum fight against COVID.

The first sign of a decline came four days later, on November 30, when Sun, the deputy prime minister, met with the NHC and stressed for the first time that the current variants were mild, a stark contrast to consistent messaging. highlighting COVID as a threat to life. Then, on Dec. 7, came the final zero-COVID nail in the coffin with 10 sweeping measures that dismantled key elements of the policy, from ending quarantines and disabling the "travel map" app they had used, for three years, to track everyone's location.

The end, when it came, stirred a range of emotions in China: great relief for many after being locked up and sent into central quarantine, optimism about economic recovery - but also anxiety as they faced a completely new situation with almost no preparation.

Also read |President Xi Jinping warns of challenges in China's 'new phase' of COVID-19

The three-year policy that governed all aspects of Chinese life was overthrown. The tests were also stopped. The NHC therefore no longer had an accurate measure of the spread, and the official daily figures soon became meaningless.

Allowing the virus to spread across the country and achieve immunity there as quickly as possible seems to be the government's thinking now, with the hope that it will return to normal as cases decline in early 2023. The cost of this approach, with a large unvaccinated population, is an exceptional burden on the health care system. Hospitals, medical workers and the elderly have had to deal with a flood of cases as China went from a zero-covid policy to what can only be described as a zero-covid policy almost overnight.