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China won’t give up on zero-tolerance Covid policy soon: Expert
Expert Zhong Nanshan, who formulated China’s anti-Covid policy early last year, gave two reasons for the decision: The policy has helped put down local outbreaks and it is less costly than living with Covid-19 or reintroducing restrictions each time outbreaks recur.
China’s top respiratory expert has said the country will not give up its zero-tolerance towards Covid-19 policy any time soon, effectively indicating that Beijing will continue to keep its international borders closed or heavily controlled for the foreseeable future.
Expert Zhong Nanshan, who formulated China’s anti-Covid policy early last year, gave two reasons for the decision: The policy has helped put down local outbreaks and it is less costly than living with Covid-19 or reintroducing restrictions each time outbreaks recur.
“The policy (in China) will remain for a long time,” Zhong Nanshan told China’s state-run English channel, CGTN, adding that the time period will depend on the pandemic situation globally.
Zhong said the current 2% death rate of the disease globally, despite vaccination, is not tolerable in China. “Zero tolerance costs a lot indeed, but letting the virus spread costs more,” Zhong said. “No matter how well China does, once it opens up and has imported cases, transmission will definitely occur in the country. Therefore, I believe, for now, that the zero-transmission strategy is not too costly, but is in fact a relatively less costly method.”
In a major outbreak in July-August, China counted a total of over 1,200 local infections.
In the ongoing outbreak, mostly concentrated in northern China, 538 local cases have been reported between October 17 and November 1.
The Chinese mainland on Monday reported 54 new locally transmitted Covid-19 cases, the national health commission (NHC) said in its daily report on Tuesday.
Of the new local cases, the biggest number, 27, was reported in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang.
Beijing, according to the Xinhua news agency, reported four new local Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, all from the same family, taking the total number in the latest resurgence to 35 including 33 confirmed ones and two asymptomatic carriers.
The four cases were from Tiantongyuan, a neighbourhood in Beijing’s Changping district, reputed to be the largest residential area in Asia.
“Their confirmation led the community where they live to be labelled as a medium-risk region for the epidemic. Some 142,700 residents living in the community and neighbouring streets were given nucleic acid tests starting on Tuesday morning. The mass test is likely to be completed on the same day,” the Global Times reported on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Shanghai’s Disneyland on Tuesday announced it will resume operations on Wednesday, November 3, 2021, after nearly 70,000 nucleic acid tests conducted on visitors and staff present at the resort over the weekend, returned negative.
More than 33,000 visitors inside the park on Sunday were only allowed to leave after their Covid test results came negative as one confirmed patient had visited the resort on Saturday.
The total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases on the mainland had reached 97,314 by Monday while 4,636 had died of the infection.
