China’s ‘Zero-COVID’ Limits Saved Lives but No Clear Exit

Most protesters on the mainland and in Hong Kong have focused their anger on restrictions that confine families to their homes for months. Global health experts have criticized China’s methods as unsustainable.

A have a look at China’s “zero-COVID” approach:

President Xi Jinping’s government has pursued a policy of lockdowns, repeated testing of thousands and thousands of individuals and lengthy quarantines for overseas arrivals in an try to tamp down spread.

Initially of the pandemic, other countries also had lockdowns and other restrictions that were eventually eased. Initially, the strategy in China succeeded at holding down the death toll. Nevertheless it now means China’s population has little or no exposure to the virus. And China is using only domestically developed vaccines which are less effective than those widely used elsewhere, and never enough elderly individuals are fully protected.

China’s continued reliance on lockdowns has been “somewhat draconian,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the highest U.S. infectious disease expert, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” It “really doesn’t make public health sense.”

The strict policies saved lives, but can’t be sustained, said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences on the University of Washington in Seattle.

“They should not have a plan B,” said Mokdad, adding that China’s approach ultimately will result in surges in deaths and strain on hospitals. “They can not lock the country endlessly.”

Julian Tang, a virologist at Britain’s University of Leicester, agreed that China’s try to stop each case of COVID-19 is “simply unattainable” and that it’ll do what most of the remainder of the world has done and learn to live with the virus.

“There isn’t a endgame for ‘zero-COVID,’” Tang said.

While China’s tough rules helped to avoid the hundreds of infections, hospitalizations and deaths seen within the West through the first yr of the pandemic, that disappeared with the emergence of the super-infectious omicron variant, Tang said.

“The one thing to do is to simply accept that there’s going to be a certain level of disease,” Tang said.

Dr. Paul Hunter, a professor of medication at Britain’s University of East Anglia, said China had now backed itself right into a corner and warned that exiting can be painful. He said the worth of measures like lockdowns and mask-wearing was mostly to delay as many infections as possible until vaccines were available.

“Unfortunately, the vaccines in China weren’t excellent,” Hunter said, adding that vaccination levels of its most vulnerable individuals are low and far of the protection the shots provided has now faded for those immunized way back.

Hunter said restrictions ought to be lifted incrementally to avoid hospitals being overwhelmed and said other restrictions, like mask-wearing, could possibly be held in place to scale back spread as much as possible. He said China will eventually need to open its borders, a step that may inevitably bring a surge of disease.

“The surge will peak in a short time and likewise fade somewhat quickly. But while they’re going through it, it’ll be dreadful,” he said.

The health analytics firm Airfinity released projections on Monday estimating that as much as about 2 million people in China could possibly be susceptible to death if the country were to lift its “zero-COVID” policy, given its low vaccination rates and the shortage of natural immunity amongst its population.

Local Chinese authorities eased some regulations after recent rallies, but the federal government showed no sign of backing down on its larger coronavirus strategy.

VACCINES AS ‘WAY OUT’

Dr. Bharat Pankhania, an infectious diseases expert on the University of Exeter, said China should import mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

“The scientific answer could be very clear,” Pankhania said.

He acknowledged that it is perhaps politically difficult for China to acknowledge the shortcomings of its homegrown shots, but said the country needed to search out a option to change course.

“This shouldn’t be about saving face,” he said. “The Chinese population is clearly fed up with lockdown after lockdown and the quickest way out is to immunize as fast as possible.”

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