The #XiJinping_5 campaign in China: a critical look at Xi and her frustrations with the zero-Covid policy

In the months following that initial outbreak, Xi oversaw the assembly of a toolbox of brute-force lockdowns, enforced quarantines, and digital tracking. As the virus was mostly kept outside China, the approach initially seemed to earn broad public support as China stayed free of the disease.

Fighting back tears, she shouts abuse at the hazmat-suited workers below in a video that has recently gone viral on social media platform Weibo and which appears to encapsulate the Chinese public’s growing frustration with their government’s uncompromising zero-Covid policy.

The woman has been under quarantine for half a year since returning from university in the summer, she shouts at the workers. They look back, seemingly unmoved.

“The issue is Xi Jinping already associated himself with the ‘successful’ model of fighting Covid, so the zero-Covid policy now is a de facto Xi Jinping policy,” said Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, adding that China’s handling of the virus in comparison to other countries remains a point of national pride for many Chinese.

The Communist Party Congress, to be held in Beijing on Sunday, is considered the most important political event in the country and it comes only days before a new strain of infections and flares appear.

Observers will be following the twice-a-decade meeting for clues about the party’s priorities when it comes to its zero-Covid stance which has been blamed for causing mounting problems in the economy.

No food when you don’t test for Xi: Facebook, Twitter, and the nation’s health ministry pushed back against Covid in China

Nerves are high in China’s capital, where online photos posted Thursday appeared to show an exceptionally rare public protest against Xi. Yes to food when you refuse the Covid test. No to confinement and no to freedom. Yes, to be honest, no to lies. Yes, to reform rather than to engage in cultural revolution. No to a great leader, yes to vote. Don’t be a slave, be a citizen,” read one banner hung over an overpass despite the heightened security surrounding the Congress.

Weibo, a Twitter-like platform, immediately censored search results for “Sitong Bridge,” the site of the protest. Key words were restricted from search before it was too late.

The super app essential for daily life in China has banned a lot of accounts after they commented on the protest.

Still, many spoke out to express their support and awe. Some shared the Chinese pop hit “Lonely Warrior” in a veiled reference to the protester, who some called a “hero,” while others posted under the same phrase: “I saw it.”

According to the state media articles this week, the country may change tack after Congress, but even so, there’s still a chance that the party will stick to its zero- Covid approach into the foreseeable future.

CNN calculated that at one point last month, more than 300 million people across dozens of cities in China had been put under partial or full lockdowns.

On Wednesday, China’s National Health Commission (NHC) gave up trying to keep track of all the new Covid cases, announcing it would no longer include asymptomatic infections in its daily count. These cases had been reported in a separate category from the confirmed ones.

The China fight against the Covid pandemic: Xinhua, Xinjiang, and the state-run Chinese newspaper PDR

Some people in the city have reportedly been drinking more water than they need because of the possible of unpredictable snap lock-ups and the fact that authorities have backtracked on previous statements.

The announcement that the water authorities have taken action to ensure water quality after discovering water quality issues is worse for panic buying because it involves the discovery of saltwater at the mouth of the Yangtze River.

Officially, the number of reported cases has been dropping since late November because of the changes in testing requirements, but there are indications that infections in some regions are rising. The Chinese media agency Xinhua said that Beijing was facing a rapid growth in infections.

The country has also seen an uptick in cases in domestic tourist destinations, despite its strict curbs having discouraged people from traveling or spending over China’s Golden Week holiday in early October.

More than two million university students have been locked down on their campuses because of the latest outbreak, according to a deputy director of the Department of Education. And the outbreak on campus has led to punitive action, with one university Communist Party boss being sacked after 39 students from his institution tested positive.

Then there is the situation in far western Xinjiang, where some 22 million people have been banned from leaving the region and are required to stay home. Xinjiang recorded 403 new cases on Thursday, according to an official tally.

Yet amid it all, Beijing appears unwilling to move from its hardline stance. For three days this week, the state-run Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily published commentaries reiterating that China would not let its guard down.

The battle against Covid was winnable, it said. Other countries that had reopened and eased restrictions had done so because they had no choice, it said, as they had failed to “effectively control the epidemic in a timely manner.”

Living with the Xi: Where are we going? How much do mobile apps and QR codes have to do? A case study of a Shanghai resident

Nearly three years later, however, Xi is poised to cement his place as China’s most powerful leader in decades, when he is anointed with a likely norm-breaking third term as the party chief on Sunday.

Many are watching for signs that restrictions on freedom of expression could be loosened at this week’s Communist Party National Congress. But with Xi having personally tied himself to the policy, any change would need to come straight from the top – and from a leader, who throughout his rule, has sought to extend, not curtail, the party’s control on daily life.

China’s advanced online ecosystem – run on mobile phone superapps and ubiquitous QR codes – has offered arguably unrivaled convenience for consumers to shop, dine and travel. Now, those technologies play a role in constraining daily life.

The system designed to track citizens and designate whether or not they entered certain venues is powered by the mobile phone health codes, which increase state control of people’s movement.

If you’re carrying a negative Covid test and don’t get flagged as a close contact of a patient at the grocery store, you can go in there without a problem.

Going out in public can be a risk if you are placed under a smilment or barricaded by authorities into a mall or office building to keep you away from the general vicinity if you do test positive.

One Shanghai resident named Li who spent a recent afternoon scrambling to prove he did not need to stop quark after his wife was pinned near to a positive case by a tracking system said that big data has flaws.

When he had been with his wife, Li said they had no idea they were in trouble, but they reached a hotline and explained their situation.

The cost of a zero-Covid policy: a critique of Beijing’s political protest and her frustration with the cost of vaccinations and vaccines

“The essence of persisting with dynamic zero-Covid is putting people first and prioritizing life,” read a recent editorial in the People’s Daily – one of three along similar lines released by the party mouthpiece last week in an apparent bid to lower public expectation about any policy changes ahead of the Party Congress.

One of the earliest signs of rising frustration with the cost of the policy was seen in a comment that read: “What makes you think you won’t be on that late night bus one day?”

There was a rare political protest in Beijing last week, where banners were hung from a bridge on a busy road that reminded them of social controls.

Speaking before 2,300 mostly surgical-mask clad Communist Party members at the beginning of the party’s five yearly leadership reshuffle on Sunday,Xi gave a broad endorsement of the Covid controls, saying the party had “protected the people’s health and safety to the greatest extent.”

The impact of those controls has become more pronounced, as the disruptions have left people struggling for food and medicine and grappling with lost income.

Local authorities increased controls in the run up to the Party congress in order to control outbreak that coincide with political event.

Covid’s threat is mitigated because of the higher vaccine coverage and the availability of antivirals. Taken together, I think the point has already been crossed where continuing zero-Covid could be considered a cost-effective strategy,” he said, adding that maintaining high vaccine coverage was key for a planned transition away from zero-Covid.

One of the studies, posted as a preprint without peer review on 14 December, uses data from recent outbreaks in Hong Kong and Shanghai to compare different scenarios in China. It finds that hospitals will be overwhelmed if infections increase as quickly as expected. This will probably result in about one million deaths over the next few months, the study forecasts.

If the government is to try to minimize the impact on people, they need to increase vaccinations.

She doesn’t need a shot until China re-opens, she’s not afraid of COVID-19 anymore, she doesn’t feel the need for a vaccine until China reopens, and she believes the virus is changing too quickly for the vaccines available in China.

“The vaccines take time, the ICU expansion takes time – and if you don’t see effort to prepare for the change, that implies that they are not planning to change the policy any time soon,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

The Chinan Government is Changing its Quarantine and Testing Policies to Combat Covid-19: Results from the December 13 Meeting of the Communist Party

Already the health code system has been used to diffuse social protest – with petitioners who lost their savings in rural banks barred from protesting after their health codes inexplicably turned red.

In December, China removed all of itsQuarantine and Testing policies as the more-infectious Omicron variant leapfrogged past its COVID controls.

The Communist Party’s top decision-making body met on Friday and decided to maintain Covid protocols and emphasize the need to minimize economic and social disruptions.

The zero-tolerance approach has faced increasing challenges from highly transmissible new variants, and its heavy economic and social costs have drawn mounting public backlash.

The easing of the measures will see authorities scrap the so-called “circuit breaker” mechanism, under which China-bound flights were suspended if an airline was found to carry a certain number of passengers who tested positive for Covid upon landing.

Inbound international passengers will also see their pre-departure test requirement reduced from two to one, and their mandatory centralized quarantine upon arrival cut from seven days to five days, followed by another three days of home isolation.

Markets responded positively to the changes as there were restrictions on international investors. The Hang Seng Index shot up in Hong Kong just after the noon break, while the mainland China’s benchmark index rose 2.5%.

Under the new guidelines, people who are identified as close contacts of Covid-19 cases will also have shortened quarantine at centralized government-operated facilities, down from seven days plus another three days at home, to five days and three days at home.

Some of the Chinese government’s strict zero-COVID policies were relaxed on Wednesday. People who have mild or no symptoms of the disease can be isolated for the first time at their homes because of relaxed testing and travel restrictions. But researchers worry the changes will lead to a rise in infections that risk overwhelming hospitals.

The government reported 10,535 new domestically transmitted cases on Thursday, the highest in months, and the authorities girded for the situation to worsen.

The National Health Commission warned that the epidemic “is likely to further expand in scope and scale” due to mutations and weather factors in the winter and spring.

CNN Observer Reports China Zero Covid Discontent Resopening Mic Intl Hnk: The Last Video Chat with a Chinese Auto Dealer

Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. Sign up here.

Zhou, an auto dealer in northeastern China, last saw his father alive in a video chat on the afternoon of November 1, hours after their home on the far outskirts of Beijing was locked down.

At the time Zhou’s parents and his son were living in the apartment building, they didn’t even know that Covid restrictions had been imposed.

“The local government killed my dad,” Zhou told CNN in his Beijing home, breaking down in tears. He said he’s received no explanation about why the ambulance took so long to arrive, just a death certificate stating the wrong date of death.

The day after Zhou’s father died, a 3-year-old boy was killed by gas poisoning in a locked down compound in the northwestern city of Lanzhou. A little girl died in a hotel after a 12 hour delay in medical care.

Zhou contacted several Beijing state media to report on his story, but there were no reporters there. Amid growing desperation and anger, he turned to foreign media – despite knowing the risk of repercussions from the government. CNN is only using his surname to mitigate that risk.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/25/china/china-zero-covid-discontent-reopening-mic-intl-hnk/index.html

Frustrated over the Covid lockdown: How Chinese officials are responding to the protests in Chongqing, Guangzhou, and Beijing

In central China this week, workers at the largest Apple assembly factory fought with hazmat-suited security officers over bonus payment delays and chaotic Covid rules.

The resident in the southwest city of Chongqing delivered a speech that criticized the Covid lock down on his residential compound. “Without freedom, I would rather die!” He yelled to a crowd of cheering people that he was a hero, who wrestled him from the grasp of several police officers who were trying to take him away.

Many football fans in China were only able to watch the World Cup from their homes, while those who were under some form of restriction were not allowed to see it.

The fans were not told to submit proof of test results, nor were they seen wearing face masks. Are they living in the same place as us? asked a Wechat article questioning China’s insistence on zero-Covid, which went viral before it was censored.

There are signs that the heat of the growing discontent in China is starting to affect the officials who are in charge.

Local officials are reverting to a zero-tolerance stance when it comes to infections, instead of relaxing controls.

The northern city of Shijiazhuang was among the first to cancel mass testing. It also allowed students to return to schools after a long period of online classes. But as cases rose over the weekend, authorities reimposed a lockdown on Monday, telling residents to stay home.

On Tuesday, financial hub Shanghai banned anyone arriving in the city from entering venues including shopping malls, restaurants, supermarkets and gyms for five days. Authorities also shut down cultural and entertainment venues in half of the city.

In Guangzhou, officials this week extended the lockdown on Haizhu district – where the protest took place – for the fifth time, and locked down its most populous Baiyun district.

In Beijing, streets in its largest district of Chaoyang are largely empty as authorities urged residents to stay home and ordered businesses to shut. Schools across several districts also moved to online classes this week.

Huang said he does not expect any fundamental changes to the zero-Covid policy in the short term. “Because the local governments’ incentive structure has not been changed. They are still held accountable for the Covid situation in their jurisdiction,” he said.

Chinese officials deny that the 20 measures listed in the government guidelines are to be used for a pivot to living with the virus.

Back on the outskirts of Beijing, Zhou said while the zero-Covid policy “is beneficial to the majority,” its implementation at a local level had been too draconian.

He didn’t want this to happen again in China or anywhere in the world. I lost my dad. My son lost his grandpa. I am angry now.

Getting back to normal life: How China’s zero-covariant controls impacted on a Beijing tech company manager during a two-month lockdown

The government has made changes to the country’s zero-covial controls, including closing some checkpoints, peeling health code signs off metro station walls and dismantling physical signs.

While the changes were greeted with relief by many and sparked discussion online of freer travel within the country – and perhaps even international travel in the future – there was also a sense of uncertainty about what lay ahead.

The manager at a Beijing tech company said the world changed overnight. “I feel like we are getting back to normal life. This is important to me because if I don’t get back to a normal life, I might lose my mind.”

“How can it change so fast?” “Do you want to know?” “It gives me the feeling that we are like fools. It is up to them. That is what I feel right now, because they said it was good, so then it was good. It is so amazing but I have no choice. All I can do is follow the arrangement.”

David Wang, 33, a freelancer in Shanghai, said although the changes were welcome, they had also sparked a feeling of disbelief in the city, which underwent a chaotic, more than two-month-long, citywide lockdown earlier this year.

“Of course I was very happy about these new changes – (but) most of my friends are showing typical signs of PTSD, they just can’t believe it’s happening,” he said.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/08/china/china-zero-covid-relaxation-reaction-intl-hnk/index.html

China’s response to the Omicron virus is “sudden and arbitrary,” the top health official told AFP on Wednesday

Top health officials in Beijing on Wednesday said the changes to the rules were based on scientific evidence, including the spread of the comparatively milder Omicron variant, the vaccination rate, and China’s level of experience in responding to the virus.

A lot of the health code tracking and mass testing rules were repealed last week by the top health officials. Some aspects of those measures, such as health code use in designated places and central quarantine of severe cases, as well as home isolation of cases, remain.

In the past the government and state media used the dangers of the virus and its long-term effects to justify the maintenance of restrictive policies.

State media are trying to downplay the lethality of the Omicron variant. At the same time, a huge drive to vaccinate the elderly is underway.

There were numerous reports of panic buying of IV medication on the Weibo platform on Thursday, as well as topics about what to do if they are found to be Omicron.

People weren’t told what type of medicine they should have or what to do if they came in contact with an infectious disease. Sam Wang, 26, a lawyer in Beijing, said that the policy release felt “sudden and arbitrary.”

Many people expressed concern about living with the virus. “I want to keep myself safe, but I don’t know how that will affect my body if I get another disease or two.”

Meanwhile, his mother was now buying high-grade N95 masks and preparing for a “nuclear winter” until a potential initial wave of cases passed, Wang said.

Implications of the China Health Code with Covid-19 for Hospitals and Health Care: The Importance of a New Public-Health Reopening

Many are watching to see how the guidelines are implemented in their cities as local authorities adjust, there is some discrepancy in how the guidelines are implemented.

The Beijing authorities stated on Wednesday that the health code with a negative Covid-19 test would be required for entering some entertainment venues in conflict with the national guidelines.

The government’s announcement last week that it was ending many of the most chauvinist measures has led to a new move. Three years of travel restrictions and health scares, as well as requirements for a clean bill of health to be shown to public areas, have followed.

But researchers say some aspects of the new rules are ambiguous and open to interpretation by local governments, including when and where to test people during an outbreak, what defines high-risk areas and how to manage them.

Many people in China live in densely populated high-rise buildings, where it will be difficult to limit transmission. George Liu, a public-health researcher at La Trobe University inMELBOURNE, Australia says that people should be allowed to stymy at home. This could make it difficult for hospitals.

The timing of the reopening is not ideal, say researchers. Hospitals will be seeing a rise in patients during the winter season due to the flu. And many people will also be travelling across the country for next month’s Lunar New Year and spring festival, further increasing viral spread, says Xi Chen, an economist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, who studies China’s public-health system.

China doesn’t have a strong system for primary medical care, which makes people go to hospital for mild conditions, according toXi Chen.

Without additional support, the eased restrictions might not help businesses to recover from protracted lockdowns or remove the social stigma attached to COVID-19, says Joy Zhang, a sociologist at the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK. “I’m afraid that the health and socio-economic risk will be passed on to individuals.”

There is a need for urgent guidance on how to curb transmission during a surge, such as through mask mandates, work from home policies, and temporary school closings. The reduction in testing doesn’t mean that officials will know whether cities are approaching the peak of the epidemic or not.

A study shows that if 85% of the population got a fourth dose of the vaccine instead of the in-activated vaccine, it would slow the rise in infections and reduce the number of deaths. Pushing fourth vaccine doses, combined with giving antiviral drugs to people aged 60 and older and to other individuals at high-risk of developing severe disease, could reduce deaths by up to 35%.

However, two studies find that the number of deaths could be reduced by giving most of the population a fourth vaccine dose, combined with a high level of adherence to masking and reimposition of temporary restrictions on social interactions when death rates surge. These measures could also ease the burden on hospitals.

Vaccines for the elderly are rare in China, and so is the situation of Tan Hua’s case: In spite of concerns about vaccination trends, two Beijing centers were empty Tuesday

“I have an advantage in that I don’t go to an office to work. She doesn’t have a job in a company or a government agency, so she doesn’t get to meet a lot of people. I think I protect myself very well.

Despite a push to boost vaccinations among the elderly, two centers set up in Beijing to administer shots were empty Tuesday except for medical personnel. There was no evidence of a surge in patients despite fears of a major outbreak.

Product quality issues for years have hampered manufacturing in China, and it has its roots in the production of pharmaceuticals. Tan Hua’s case is very relevant.

In 2014, Tan, then 34 years old, was bitten by a dog. She saw a doctor and was given a shot of what her mother, Hua Xiuzhen, says they were told was the best rabies vaccine on the market. But it didn’t go well.

The very night of March 13: When the COVID-19 epidemic broke, why the vaccine did not work: a real estate executive in Shanghai

“That very night she got a headache and dizziness. Her memory declined sharply. She had convulsions. Everything was dark for her and she couldn’t see. She couldn’t walk straight.

They blame the vaccine for that, and since then have been on a crusade for justice. She also now avoids all vaccines — including those for COVID-19, of which China has approved 12.

Recent decades of economic growth in China have led to product quality scandals, including baby formula cut with chemicals and contaminated blood thinners.

For most people in China, state media and health professionals are the most-trusted sources for information about COVID-19, according to surveys conducted in 2020. There are only a few alternatives to state media and its array of social media accounts with the global internet cut off.

Many of the vaccine skeptics are liberals. He says that they don’t trust the government narrative about the effectiveness of the Chinese vaccines.

Jerry, a real estate executive in Shanghai, is 33 years old — and a good example of that. He did not want his full name used because of the sensitivity of the topic.

Jerry reckons COVID-19 is “kind of a flu thing” these days; nothing too serious. He hasn’t gotten the vaccine and he believes – despite science to the contrary – there’s no point.

I think the virus is changing very fast. So not a single vaccine can help,” he says, focusing on vaccines’ ability to prevent transmission rather than stave off serious illness and death.

Jerry thinks that the vaccine rate in his friends’ city may be less than 60 percent. He says couples trying to get pregnant are particularly fearful of possible side-effects.

Earlier this year, Shanghai was hit by an omicron-driven outbreak. Several people told the AP that the elderly family members that tested positive for COVID-19 were not counted in the city’s official death toll. The deaths of the patients were caused by their underlying diseases.

Zero Covid-19 Impact Impact on the Health System and the State of the State: China’s Public Health Crisis and Indirect Strikes Back in the Early Stages

But Huang, of Seton Hall, says the government may be better off bolstering the incentives for people to get the vaccine, and offering assurances of support in case something goes wrong.

Changes continued Monday as authorities announced a deactivation of the “mobile itinerary card” health tracking function planned for the following day.

It had been a point of contention for many Chinese people, including due to concerns around data collection and its use by local governments to ban entry to those who have visited a city with a “high-risk zone,” even if they did not go to those areas within that city.

There are questions about the nation’s health system being able to handle a mass outbreak as parts of the zero- Covid infrastructure are scrapped.

China Youth Daily reported on hours-long lines at a clinic in central Beijing on Friday, and said that experts advised people not to visit hospitals unless necessary.

Health workers in the capital were also grappling with a surge in emergency calls, including from many Covid-positive residents with mild or no symptoms, with a hospital official on Saturday appealing to residents in such cases not to call the city’s 911-like emergency services line and tie up resources needed by the seriously ill.

The daily volume of emergency calls had surged from its usual 5,000 to more than 30,000 in recent days, Chen Zhi, chief physician of the Beijing Emergency Center said, according to official media.

In an interview with state media Saturday, a top Covid-19 expert said the disease had spread rapidly in China.

“No matter how strong the prevention and control is, it will be difficult to completely cut off the transmission chain,” Zhong, who has been a key public voice since the earliest days of the pandemic in 2020, was quoted saying by Xinhua.

The rapid rollback of testing nationwide and the shift by many people to use antigen tests at home has also made it difficult to gauge the extent of the spread, with official data now appearing meaningless.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/china/china-zero-covid-impact-beijing-intl-hnk-mic/index.html

China needs urgent medical attention to cope with COVID-19, the aging population and public dissent in the wake of nationwide protests

Outside experts have warned that China may be underprepared to handle the expected surge of cases, after the surprise move to lift its measures in the wake of nationwide protests against the policy, growing case numbers and rising economic costs.

Zhong, in the state media interview, said the government’s top priority now should be booster shots, particularly for the elderly and others most at risk, especially with China’s Lunar New Year coming up next month – a peak travel time where urban residents visit elderly relatives and return to rural hometowns.

Faced with a surge of COVID-19 cases, China is setting up more intensive care facilities and strengthened hospitals’ ability to deal with severe cases

The experts warned that a lack of experience with the virus and years of state media coverage focused on its dangers and impact overseas could prompt some people to ignore the need to seek medical care, further overloading the system.

China’s market watchdog said on Friday that there was a “temporary shortage” of some “hot-selling” drugs and vowed to crackdown on price gouging, while major online retailer JD.com last week said it was taking steps to ensure stable supplies after sales for certain medications surged 18 times that week over the same period in October.

There was a state media interview with a doctor in Beijing, who said that people who tested positive for Covid-19, and had no symptoms, did not need to take medication to recover.

People who have mild symptoms don’t need medication at all. It is enough to rest at home, maintain a good mood and physical condition The chief infectious disease physician at Beijing You An Hospital said in an interview that he had watched more than 350 million times since Friday.

China will no longer require travel tracing as part of its exit from the strict “zero-carbon” policies that have caused widespread discontent.

In Beijing and other places, protests over the restrictions grew into a demand for the Communist Party and its leader to step down, a level of public dissent not seen in decades.

Beijing’s response to COVID-19: Health Care Reform in the Era of the First Presidential Reintended Emergency Referendum in China

Concerns have arisen about a new wave of infections potentially overwhelming health care resources in some places because of the relaxation.

The government decided to allow those with mild symptoms to recuperate at home instead of being sent to field hospitals that have become notorious for overcrowding and poor hygiene.

Reports from the Chinese internet assured the public that restrictions would be dropped and that the economy would soon return to pre-pandemic conditions.

Protests erupted Nov. 25 after 10 people died in a fire in the northwestern city of Urumqi. Many believed COVID-19 restrictions may have impeded rescue efforts. Authorities denied the claims spread online, but demonstrators gave voice to longstanding frustration in cities such as Shanghai that have endured severe lockdowns.

The economy lost steam during the third quarter of this year with a 2.6% contraction, and the government promised to bring the cost and disruption down. Forecasters say the economy probably is shrinking in the current quarter. In November, imports plummeted 10.9% from a year ago, a sign of weak demand.

Amid the unpredictable messaging from Beijing, experts warn there still is a chance the ruling party might reverse course and reimpose restrictions if a large-scale outbreak ensues.

Last week’s announcement allowed considerable room for local governments to assign their own regulations. Most restaurants in Beijing require a negative test result to be obtained over the previous 48 hours and government offices are even more strict.

Did I feel like a knocking noise when I woke up early in the morning? A case study of centralized quarantine in Guangzhou, China

Editor’s Note: Lars Hamer is the Editor-in-Chief of the China lifestyle magazine, That’s. He has been living in China. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Follow him on Twitter @LarsHamer1. You can read more on CNN.

It is the knock that every resident dreads. Early Tuesday morning, a sudden loud banging at the door of my apartment in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. Health care workers wearing hazmat suits ordered everyone to go downstairs because of a positive test for Covid-19, as fear washed over me.

I had good reason to worry. Just one month ago, a teacher friend of mine and his colleagues were sent to centralized quarantine after one student at his school tested positive for Covid-19. I feared the same was about to happen to me.

Not a single one of the sorts, to my surprise. I took a Covid-19 test and underwhelmingly, that was it. I was completely free to leave my house and go about my day without restriction before my result came out.

I would have been labeled as a close contact and would have been powerless to escape the facility if this had occurred weeks before.

The day that Beijing became a COVID-19 metropolis: From a ghost town to a bustling city: Five years ago when Beijing had a lockdown

Almost overnight, Guangzhou, a city of some 15 million people, has been transformed from a Covid-19 ghost town back to the bustling metropolis I first encountered when I moved here five years ago.

In the event of a lockdown, the blocking of fire exits is forbidden by the new measure. People who are sick can stay at home. Quarantine facilities are a thing of the past.

Friends and families who had not seen each other for months gathered in bars and restaurants, and QR codes were being ripped down from walls; our movements no longer tracked.

I spent most days working until late at night because it was the only thing to do; non-essential businesses had closed, and millions of people were confined to their homes. I too began to feel the strain, and started thinking about leaving the country.

It was a big deal, pure disbelief. The day that Guangzhou had over 8,000 cases was similar to the city’s lockdown in April.

BEIJING — Some Chinese universities say they will allow students to finish the semester from home in hopes of reducing the potential of a bigger COVID-19 outbreak during the January Lunar New Year travel rush.

It wasn’t clear how many schools were taking part, but universities in Shanghai and nearby cities said students would be given the option of either returning home early or staying on campus and undergoing testing every 48 hours. The Lunar New Year, which falls on Jan. 22 this year, is traditionally China’s busiest travel season.

Universities have been the scene of frequent lockdowns over the past three years, occasionally leading to clashes between the authorities and students confined to campus or even their dorm rooms.

The end of the COVID-19 tightening measures in Beijing, China, as announced by the United States Interior Ministry on Tuesday (with an e-mail message from the PMC)

The move follows the government’s dramatic announcement last week that it was ending many of the strictest measures, following three years during which it enforced some of the world’s tightest virus restrictions.

Travelers arriving in the southern city who currently can’t go to bars or eat in restaurants for the first three days will be freed of those restrictions on Tuesday. It would also scrap the use of its contact-tracing app, although vaccine requirements to enter venues like restaurants will remain in place. The new measures take effect on Wednesday.

The easing of control measures on the mainland means a sharp drop in obligatory testing from which daily infections numbers are compiled, but cases appear to be rising rapidly, with many testing themselves at home and staying away from hospitals.

China’s government-supplied figures are not independently verified, and there are questions about whether the ruling Communist Party has tried to reduce the number of deaths.

The U.S. consulates in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang and the central city of Wuhan will offer only emergency services from Tuesday “in response to increased number of COVID-19 cases,” the State Department said.

“Mission China tries to ensure that full consular services are accessible to the U.S. citizens living in the PRC, but more disruptions are possible,” an e-mailed message said.

BEIJING (AP) — China’s National Health Commission scaled down its daily COVID-19 report starting Wednesday in response to a sharp decline in PCR testing since the government eased anti-virus measures after daily cases hit record highs.

The commission had stopped publishing daily figures on cases in which no symptoms are detected since it was impossible to accurately grasp the actual number of people with infections, according to a notice on the website. The only numbers they’re reporting are confirmed cases detected in public testing facilities.

Beijing’s streets have grown eerily quiet, with lines forming outside fever clinics — the number of which has been increased from 94 to 303 — and at pharmacies, where cold and flu medications are harder to find.

At the China-Japan Friendship Hospital’s fever clinic in Beijing, a dozen people waited for nucleic acid test results. Nurses in full-body white protective gear checked in patients one by one.

A few kilometers (miles) south, at Chaoyang Hospital, about a dozen people waited in a line of blue tents, deflecting winds amid subzero temperatures. A person in the queue sprayed a bottle of ionized water around her as she waited.

Across the street at Gaoji Baikang Pharmacy, around a dozen people waited in line for cough medication and Chinese herbal remedies. A sign at the front told waiting customers: “Avoid panic and hoarding, we are doing all we can to stock up to fulfill your medicinal needs.” A man coming out stated that he wouldn’t be able to buy more than two packages of Lianhua Qingwen for all of his customers.

Hospitals have also reportedly been struggling to remain staffed, while packages were piling up at distribution points because of a shortage of China’s ubiquitous motorized tricycle delivery drivers.

The impact of the city’s outbreak in Sanlitun was visible on Tuesday. There, the usually bustling shops and restaurants were without customers and, in some cases, functioning on skeleton crews or offering takeout only.

Similar scenes are playing out in Beijing, as offices, shops, and residential communities report being understaffed or shifting working arrangements as employees get sick with the virus. Meanwhile, others stay home to avoid being infected.

In the last week, 21 of the 24 workers in the Beijing neighborhood committee office have fallen sick, according to one community worker.

“As our superiors are mostly infected, there’s not much work being given to us,” said the employee, Sylvia Sun. “(The usual) events, lectures, performances, parent-child activities will definitely not be held.”

The NHC said it’s impossible to grasp the actual number of infections.

In a Twitter post, Beijing-based lawyer and former American Chamber of Commerce in China chairman James Zimmerman said about 90% of people in his office had Covid, up from around half a few days ago.

The city’s major hospitals recorded 19,000 patients with flu symptoms from December 5 to 11 – more than six times that of the previous week, a health official said Monday.

Sun Chunlan, an official with Covid who is in charge of managing Beijing’s response, said that so far there have only been 50 severe and critical cases in hospitals.

“At present, the number of newly infected people in Beijing is increasing rapidly, but most of them are asymptomatic and mild cases,” said Sun, who also called for more fever clinics to be set up and made assurances that supply of medicines – which have been hit by a surge in purchases in recent days – was being increased.

Prominent Shanghai physician Zhang Wenhong warned that hospitals should do everything they could to ensure that health workers were not getting infected as quickly as the people in the communities they serve. Such a situation could result in a shortage of medical staff and infections among patients, he said, according to local media reports.

Social media users questioned why the reporter, who showed her two-bed room and access to fever medicine in a video interview posted by her employer Beijing Radio and Television Station on Sunday, received such treatment while others were struggling.

“Awesome! A young reporter gets a space in a temporary hospital and takes liquid Ibuprofen for children that is hard-to-find for parents in Beijing,” read one sarcastic comment, which got thousands of likes.

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Amid fears of the virus, residents have rushed to buy canned peaches, following rumors the vitamin C-loaded snack could prevent or treat Covid. Chinese state media has since warned people the preserved fruit is not a Covid remedy nor a substitute for medicine.

Under the current conditions, a nationwide reopening could result in up to 684 deaths per million people, according to the projections by three professors at the University of Hong Kong.

A research paper that was released last week said that a large surge of infections would likely overload many local health systems.

Simultaneously lifting restrictions in all provinces would lead to hospitalization demands 1.5 to 2.5 times of surge hospital capacity, according to the study.

They were the first officially reported deaths since the dramatic easing of restrictions on December 7, although Chinese social media posts have pointed to a surge in demand at Beijing’s funeral homes and crematoriums in recent weeks.

An employee at a funeral home on the outskirts of Beijing told CNN they were swamped by the long queues for cremation, and customers would need to wait until at least the next day to cremate their loved ones.

There is a surge in infections in other major cities. In the financial hub of Shanghai, schools have moved most classes online starting from Monday. In Guangzhou, authorities have told students not to get ready for school because they are already taking online classes.

In a city which had been in the throes of a mass lockdown due to Covid, the public sector workers who tested positive for it can go to work as normal.

Chinese experts say worse is yet to come. Wang said cases of carbon dioxide will peak at the end of this month. One Shanghai hospital warned residents that it was preparing for up to half of the city’s population to be infected by next week.

Speaking at a conference in Beijing on Saturday, Wu said the current wave would run until mid-January. The second wave is expected to last from late January to February next year because of the massive travel ahead of the New Year holiday.

The annual migration of hundreds of millions of Chinese people to see family and friends in their hometowns is called the largest migration on Earth.

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“It is never too late to flatten the curve,” says Xi Chen, an economist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, who studies China’s public-health system.

But these estimates include only deaths due directly to COVID-19, and do not take into account excess deaths because of delays in treating people with non-COVID-19 diseases, says Ewan Cameron, a modeller at the Telethon Kids Institute in Perth, Australia.

The two studies broadly agree on mortality estimates and the impact of interventions, says Cameron. The similarity is indicative of the agreement that herd immunity will only be achieved after a huge spread of transmission across the country.

Zhong also said that 78% of patients infected with the Omnicron variant won’t be reinfected for quite a long time. Studies suggest protection against reinfection declines dramatically over time and most people will be reinfected every one to two years.

The Chinese internet was not fooled by the about-face. Posts juxtaposing several experts’ TV appearances before and after state policy change – including Zhong and Liang – have garnered more than 100,000 views.

Wu Fan, a member of Shanghai’s disease outbreak containment expert commission famous for insisting that Shanghai could not shut down is now receiving apologies online.

Whiplash aside, much of the online discussion has moved to how to deal with the aftermath of the policy change, including what preventative measures and treatments are available.

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Untested remedies to fight COVID have again flourished in recent days. The method of rinsing out your mouth using iced salt water was recommended by an internal medicine doctor who is a member of the Academy of Engineering. Commenters online were baffled. “Wasn’t salt water rinse debunked two years ago? Does an iced version make a difference?” A person wrote in a post.

The chaos and uncertainty right now reminds Chen Wenhong, an associate professor of media studies and sociology at University of Texas, of the atmosphere in early 2020 when COVID was first spreading. “It’s kind of flying in the dark.”

Additionally, non-state media outlets are vulnerable to government crackdowns. In August, the government’s promotion of traditional Chinese medicine as well as the zero-COVID policy was criticized by a well-Read online health information outlet that was suspended from popular social media platforms. Its accounts on the popular Chinese social media site are not being used today.

The Daily Mail reported that Moderna made the vaccine, but how the Communist Party-controlled newspaper, The Global Times, cited it was misleading. The Global Times extensively used the coverage to attack other theories about the viruses’s origin and one that suggested it leaked from a government research lab. The British media was put into the headlines by smaller social media accounts who made videos of the report.

“The Chinese diaspora has played a very useful role here to share with people back in China about their personal COVID experience,” Chen says, “knowing that in most cases it will not be that serious.”

She points out that while researchers and journalists often pay attention to social media discourse, many rural, often elderly residents rely on television and family members in larger cities to stay informed. Many are at risk of the disease, live in areas with limited healthcare, and don’t find information about the disease on social media.

As NPR reported, public health authorities don’t base their messages for the public entirely on science – many considerations are also pragmatic and culturally-based.

Scientists have some soul searching to do over the next two years, according to Chen. We know that politics will play a part in public health and also in science, but how do we conduct ourselves? What are our ethics?

An AP investigation then showed that numbers have been clouded by the way health authorities tally COVID-19 statistics, applying a much narrower, less transparent and at times shifting standard, as Shanghai changed how it defined positive cases.

A reporter saw a number of people being wheeled out of funeral homes in Beijing last week, and two of the people’s relatives told the AP that their loved ones had died because they tested positive for Colovid-19. The country didn’t report any deaths due to COVID-19 last week.

But experts have repeatedly advised that authorities should err on the side of caution while counting deaths. Problems in death counts have raised questions in countries ranging from South Africa to Russia.

” I don’t think the doctors in the village or the township can handle the increased cases,” says Wang, who is a researcher at the Stanford Center on China’s economy and institutions. In a dark winter the rural villagers are left on their own.

As the Lunar New Year approaches, health officials are concerned the celebrations could turn into superspreader events, catching rural systems off guard and driving up infections in a country where natural immunity is nearly non-existent and vaccine hesitancy has remained stubbornly high among the older population.

“We have a new year coming up in China and the public is going to travel in the rural areas so it’s important to inform the public that it’s coming,” says Ali Mokdad, an epidemiologist.

A model released last week by the University of Hong Kong said that up to 1 million people will die in the next seven years if China doesn’t change its policies.

“As the experts say, just set off some fireworks, have a good party and scare away the virus,” says Sun Caiyun, an ebullient restaurant owner in Beijing who says she is intent on heading back to her home village in the northern Shandong province – COVID or not. “Of course I am planning on returning home, because Beijing bans firecrackers!”

However, the strain China’s on countryside is already evident as medicine shortages hit rural pharmacies. Rural residents in China have been asking for donations on social media, with pictures of empty pharmacy shelves. After the surge, some of the medication was diverted to cities, where supplies first ran out.

“The number they [are] willing to show the number of deaths is almost bordering on ridiculous,” says Ray Yip, an epidemiologist who founded the Center for Disease Control’s office in China in 2003.

NPR visited hospitals in Beijing this week and they were busy but orderly, with a small group of elderly patients lying ingurneys in the lobby because beds were running out.

So far, the health care system has held up in large cities – in part because many migrant workers have only rural health insurance that cannot be used in urban hospitals.

“You just have to suck it for a few days,” says Zhang Xiaohu, a delivery worker who contracted COVID in early December. He was able to work through his symptoms because he doesn’t get paid sick leave and can’t afford a Beijing hospital. “As a delivery guy, you have to be someone that can risk their life.”

A man waiting in line said his grandfather was sick with a high temperature last week and they had to look for a hospital that could take him.