Observing China’s zero-Covid campaign with Weibo: A case study in a pandemic-era quarantine

It is the government’s official position that they are still committed to stopping virus transmission. The latest moves suggest the party will be able to tolerate more cases without any of the limitations of the zero-COVID strategy.

A video of a woman crying and yelling abuse at hazmat-suited workers on a social media platform was recently uploaded to Weibo and illustrates the anger of the Chinese public at the government’s zero-concentration policy.

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

While most Asian economies – even those with previously hardline zero-Covid stances – are abandoning pandemic-era restrictions, authorities in China remain zealous in theirs, repeatedly insisting this week in state-run media articles that the battle against the virus remains “winnable.”

Just days before the most important political event of the country, the Communist Party Congress in Beijing on Sunday, there is a new strain of illness that comes from other countries.

Observers around the world will be watching for signs of the party’s priorities when it come to its zero- Covid stance, which has been blamed for increasing the problems in the economy, such as a stalling growth and collapsing housing market.

No to Covid Test, No to Democracy, and No to Reconsideration of China’s Unprecedented Public Dialogue of the 2018 Beijing Covid Experiment

There is anxiety in China’s capital where online photos appeared to show a rare public protest against the president. No to the Covid test, yes to food. No to lockdown, yes to freedom. Yes, no to lying, and yes to dignity. Yes, but to reform not to cultural revolution. No to great leader, yes to vote. One banner hung over an overpass said, ” Don’t be a slave, be a citizen.”

Search results for “Sitong Bridge” were taken down by Weibo. Before long, key words including “Beijing,” “Haidian,” “warrior,” “brave man,” and even “courage” were restricted from search.

A number of popular Chinese social networking sites such as Weibo and WeChat have been banned as a result of comments they made about the protest.

Many people spoke out to express their support. Some shared a Chinese pop song with a reference to the protester, while others posted their thoughts on the subject under the caption: “I saw it.”

Yet even in the face of rising public discontent, all the signs suggest Xi and his party plan to stick with the zero-Covid approach, possibly into 2023, with the state media articles this week serving to dampen speculation the country may change tack post-Congress.

In Shanghai, where 25 million people have already endured two months of the world’s strictest lockdown, residents are now on edge at any signs of a repeat as authorities begin to tighten measures once again.

On Monday, Chinese health authorities announced two Covid deaths, both in the capital Beijing, which is grappling with its worst outbreak since the start of the pandemic.

Spooked by the possibility of unpredictable and unannounced snap lockdowns – and mindful that authorities have previously backtracked after suggesting that no such measures were coming – some people in the city have reportedly been hoarding drinking water.

That panic buying has been made worse by an announcement that Shanghai’s water authorities have taken action to ensure water quality after discovering saltwater inflows to two reservoirs at the mouth of the Yangtze River in September.

The Chinese government has relied on the messaging of public health experts to keep it safe since the H1N1 virus was first found in China, but they may risk their credibility by not being prepared for the large wave of infections.

The country has had an increase in cases in domestic tourist destinations despite their strict controls on travel over China’s Golden Week holiday.

More than 240,000 students have been locked out of universities in Inner Mongolia due to the latest outbreak, according to a deputy director. 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. The commentary was published for three days by the Communist Party’s People’s Daily.

The battle against Covid was winnable, it insisted. The countries that reopened and loosened restrictions had to do so because they had failed to effectively control the epidemic, it said.

SHANGHAI — China on Friday announced steps to ease its “dynamic zero COVID” policy by shortening quarantine requirements, simplifying travel rules, and adjusting its monitoring and control regime.

The new measures were announced Friday following a meeting by the ruling Communist Party’s top decision-making body, during which leaders vowed to maintain Covid protocols while stressing the need to minimize economic and social disruptions.

Implications for zero-tolerance market manipulation and the Covid-19 outbreak in the Chinese Central Airline Industry: A new update from the Ministry of Environment and Trade

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 so-called ‘circuit breaker’ mechanism, under which flights bound for China would be suspended if an airline carried a certain number of passengers who tested positive for Covid on land, will be abolished due to the easing of measures.

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 Covid-19 restrictions have kept international investors jittery. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index shot up 7% just after the noon break local time, while mainland China’s benchmark Shanghai Composite Index rose 2.5%.

People who are close to a Covid 19 case will have their quark shortened from seven to five days, including another three days at home, under the new guidelines.

The Chinese government changed some of its zero- COVID policies on Wednesday. Testing requirements and travel restrictions have been relaxed, and people infected with SARS-CoV-2 who have mild or no symptoms are for the first time allowed to isolate at home instead of in centrally managed facilities. 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 epidemic is predicted to expand in scope and scale due to weather factors during the winter and spring according to the National Health Commission.

The China’s Rise Revealed by the Covids: Loss of an Auto Dealer in Beijing, and the Birth of a 3-year-old

TheCNN newsletter, Meanwhile in China, contains an update about the country’s rise three times a week. 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.

The apartment building where Zhou and his family lived did not have any Covid cases at the time, because they did not realize that the restrictions had been imposed.

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

On the same day Zhou lost his father, a 3-year-old boy died of gas poisoning in a locked-down compound in the northwestern city of Lanzhou, after he was blocked from being taken promptly to a hospital. Two weeks later, a 4-month-old girl died in hotel quarantine in the central city of Zhengzhou after a 12-hour delay in medical care.

Zhou said he contacted several state media outlets in Beijing to report on his story, but no reporters came. He turned to foreign media despite knowing about the 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

Social and economic tolls of Covid lockdowns: a protest in Zhengzhou, Chongqing and Guangzhou

In the central city of Zhengzhou this week, workers at the world’s biggest iPhone assembly factory clashed with hazmat-suited security officers over a delay in bonus payment and chaotic Covid rules.

And on Thursday, in the sprawling metropolis of Chongqing in the southwest, a resident delivered a searing speech criticizing the Covid lockdown on his residential compound. I would rather die without freedom. he shouted to a cheering crowd, who hailed him a “hero” and wrestled him from the grip of several police officers who had attempted to take him away.

These acts of defiance echoed an outpouring of discontent online, notably from Chinese football fans – many under some form of lockdown or restrictions – who have only been able to watch from home as tens of thousands of raucous fans pack stadiums at the World Cup in Qatar.

“None of the fans are seen wearing face masks, or told to submit proof of Covid test results. Are they not living on the same planet as us?” The Wechat article asked if China demanded zero- Covid, which was removed from the site.

There are signs that Chinese officials are feeling the heat of the growing public discontent, which came on top of the heavy social and economic tolls inflicted by the widening lockdowns.

Instead of relaxing controls, many local officials are reverting to the zero-tolerance playbook, attempting to stamp out infections as soon as they flare up.

Shijiazhuang was one of 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. The cultural and entertainment areas of half of the city were shut down.

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. Several districts have moved to online classes this week.

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. Despite fears of a major outbreak, there was little evidence of a surge in patient numbers.

He said he doesn’t expect any changes to the policy in the short term. The local governments haven’t changed their incentive structure. He said that they are still accountable for the situation in their jurisdiction.

For their part, Chinese officials have repeatedly denied that the 20 measures listed in the government guidelines were meant 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.

“I don’t want things like this to happen again in China and anywhere in the world,” he said. My father was no longer with me. My son lost his beloved grandfather. I am angry now.

The change of the city greeted with the zero-Covid response response intl-hnk: “I’m sorry to hear that, but I can’t believe it”

Some physical signs from the zero- Covid controls have been removed in China, as well as some health code signs from the metro station walls, due to the government announcing an update on its pandemic policy.

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 world changed overnight, according to a manager at a tech company in Beijing. I feel like we are moving in the right direction. If I don’t get back to my normal life, I might lose my mind.

How can it change so quickly? Ding asked. “It gives me the feeling that we are like fools. It’s all up to them. They said it’s good, so then it’s good … that’s what I feel right now. It is so unreal, but I have no choice. All I can do is follow the arrangement.”

The changes were welcomed in the city but they also brought a feeling of disbelief, said David Wang, a freelancer in the city.

“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

Vaccination policy and the risk of Covid-19: Beijing’s reaction to the Weibo topics and the public’s concern

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.

The health code tracking rules that were used to control the spread of Viruses were removed by top health officials last Wednesday. 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.

The government and state media had long emphasized the dangers of the virus and its potential long-term effects – and used this to justify the maintenance of restrictive policies.

State media have already begun trying to change everyone’s thinking by downplaying the lethality of the Omicron variant. At the same time, a huge drive to vaccinate the elderly is underway.

Even though experts have warned about a lack of experience with the virus, before a recent change in tone pushes others who are not in need to seek medical care further away, there was a need for greater coverage of the risks and impact of the virus.

There were numerous reports of panic buying of fever medications on Thursday, after the Weibo topics related to what to do if infections by Omicron was high on Thursday morning.

People weren’t told how much medicine they should have and what to do when they get sick. In fact, we should have started doing this a long, long time ago,” said Sam Wang, 26, a lawyer in Beijing, who added that the policy release felt “sudden and arbitrary.”

People were worried about living with the disease. A Beijing teacher named Aurora Hao says she wants to keep herself safe because she doesn’t know if she will get sick again or not.

Fears about the impact of Covid-19 within China may also play out along generational and geographic lines, as younger people and those in more cosmopolitan urban centers may be more likely to support reopening the country and relaxing rules, residents said.

Implications of the new COVID-19 restrictions on public health in Beijing, China, and the implications for healthcare systems in the coming era

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.

Already there has been some contradiction in how the guidelines are implemented as local authorities adjust – and many are watching to see the impact in their cities.

A health code showing a negative Covid-19 test should not be required for dining in at restaurants or entering some entertainment venues according to Beijing authorities.

Hao, in Beijing, said on Wednesday evening that her health code had turned yellow – which would usually bar her from entering most public places, until she queued up for another test that returned a negative result. Now, with the new rules she knew she could largely go out freely, but instead she stayed at home to “wait and see.”

The announcement by the government last week that it was ending a number of the most severe measures sparked the move. Three years of restrictions on travel and testing resulted in a clean bill of health being shown to access public areas.

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. Allowing people to quarantine at home will contribute to viral spread, says George Liu, a public-health researcher at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. Hospitals could be overwhelmed by this.

The timing of the reopening is not ideal, say researchers. Hospitals will be seeing a rise in patients during the winter season because of the flu. Many people will be travelling across the country for the lunar New Year and spring festival, which increases the spread of infectious diseases, according to an economist at Yale University.

China doesn’t have a strong system for primary medical care system, such as a network of general practitioners, so people go to hospital for mild conditions, says Xi Chen, who hopes more details on how the government plans to triage care will emerge in the coming days.

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.”

Urgent guidance is needed on how to curb transmission during a surge, such as through mask mandates, work-from-home policies and temporary school closures, says Cowling. And given the reduction in testing, it is not clear how officials will track whether cities are approaching, or have passed, the peak of an infection wave, he says.

With fourth-dose vaccination coverage of 85% and antiviral coverage of 60%, the death toll can be reduced by 26% to 35%, according to the study, which is funded partly by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Hong Kong government.

Why vaccine hellancy persists in china and what they are doing about it: Tan Hua’s story relates to an Indonesian woman

I don’t work in an office so that gives me an advantage. She says she doesn’t get in contact with a lot of people, because she doesn’t have a job. “Also I think I protect myself pretty well.”

They blamed the vaccine and since then they have been on a crusade for justice. She has also stopped taking all vaccines due to China approving 12 of them.

For many, it has its roots in product quality issues that have for years plagued manufacturing in China — including its production of pharmaceuticals. Cases like Tan Hua’s resonate.

In 2014, Tan, then 34 years old, was bitten by a dog. She got a shot of the vaccine her mother said was the best one on the market. But it didn’t go well.

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/12/09/1140830315/why-vaccine-hesitancy-persists-in-china-and-what-theyre-doing-about-it

Vaccine skeptics don’t trust the Chinese government: An example of a woman in Shanghai that is afraid of the consequences of COVID-19

She had a throbbing head and dizziness that night. Her memory declined sharply. She had convulsions. She couldn’t see; everything was dark for her. She couldn’t walk straight,” Hua told NPR by phone.

It wasn’t always like this, according to Mary Brazelton, an expert in the history of science and medicine in China at the University of Cambridge.​ In the months after the Communist takeover in 1949, the Chinese government launched several successful vaccination campaigns, taking on smallpox, tuberculosis, diphtheria and other diseases.

But lax oversight and corruption during recent decades of breakneck economic growth has led to a string of product quality scandals in China — from baby formula cut with industrial chemicals to contaminated blood thinner and tainted vaccines.​

The Chinese government needs to act quickly to get public health messages out to most vulnerable people because the disease is rapidly cascading from large cities to towns and villages.

“Many of those, the vaccine skeptics, are liberal-minded people. They just don’t trust the Chinese vaccines and the government narrative on the effectiveness of the Chinese vaccines,” he says.

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

COVID-19 is just a flu-like thing these days, according to Jerry. He doesn’t believe in the benefits of the vaccine despite the fact he hasn’t been given it.

“I just think the virus is changing so 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 estimates that the vaccination rate among his friends — educated, 30-somethings in China’s most cosmopolitan city — may be as low as 60%. He says couples trying to get pregnant are particularly fearful of possible side-effects.

An outbreak of omicron-driven infections hit Shanghai earlier this year. The people told the AP that their elderly family members who died even though they tested positive for COVID-19) were not counted in the city’s official death toll. When patients had underlying diseases, the deaths were attributed to those.

What will we learn from the zero-Covid epidemic in China if we don’t want to go to a city with a high-risk zone?

The government might be better off making sure people get the vaccine, as well as giving assurances of support in case things go 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.

But as the scrapping of parts of the zero-Covid infrastructure come apace, there are questions about how the country’s health system will handle a mass outbreak.

Media outlet China Youth Daily documented hours-long lines at a clinic in central Beijing on Friday, and cited unnamed experts calling for residents not to visit hospitals unless necessary.

A hospital official on Saturday appealed to Covid-positive residents with mild or no symptoms to not use the city’s emergency services line due to the surge in emergency calls.

The Beijing Emergency Center has seen a surge in emergency calls in the last few days with the daily volume reaching more than 30,000 according to the official media.

Experts have said the relatively low number of previously infected Covid-19 patients in China and the lower effectiveness of its widely-used inactivated-virus vaccines against Omicron infection – as compared with previous strains and mRNA vaccines – could enable the virus to spread rapidly.

Even though the prevention and control is strong it will be hard to completely cut off the transmission chain because of its size, as been quoted by IANS.

A shift to using antigen tests at home and the rapid reduction of testing nationwide makes it difficult to gauge the degree of the spread.

Beijing faces the surge in COVID-19 cases after the surprise lifting of the Xi–Peking policy and public dissent

China may be underprepared to handle the expected surge of cases after the surprise lift of its measures following protests against the policy and rising economic costs.

Facing a surge in COVID-19 cases, China is setting up more intensive care facilities and trying to strengthen hospitals’ ability to deal with severe cases.

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.

A doctor from Beijing stated in an interview that people who had no or mild symptoms of Covid-19 would not need to take medication to recover if they had tested positive for the drug.

The people with the symptoms don’t need medication at all. A good mood, physical condition and rest at home is all it takes. ,” Li Tongzeng, chief infectious disease physician at Beijing You An Hospital, said in an interview linked to a hashtag viewed more than 370 million times since Friday.

China will be dropping a travel tracing requirement as part of an uncertain exit from its zero-carbon policies that have elicited widespread discontent.

The level of public dissent is not seen in decades in Beijing and other cities, where protests over the restrictions grew into calls forXi and the Communist Party to step down. The party responded with a massive show of force and an unknown number of people were arrested at the protests or in the days following.

Chinese Resilience in the Light of the COVID-19 Enigma: State-of-the-art Measures and Local Policy Constraints

While met with relief, the relaxation has also sparked concerns about a new wave of infections potentially overwhelming health care resources in some areas.

At the same time, the government reversed course by allowing those with mild symptoms to recuperate at home rather than being sent to field hospitals that have become notorious for overcrowding and poor hygiene.

Reports on the Chinese internet reassured the public, stating that the restrictions will be dropped and economic activity will return to pre-pandemic levels.

Protests erupted Nov. 25 after 10 people died in a fire in the northwestern city of Urumqi. There are people that believe COVID-19 restrictions may have impeded rescue efforts. The claims spread online, but were denied by authorities so demonstrators continued to voice their irritation in the cities that have suffered severe lock downs.

Xi’s government promised to reduce the cost and disruption after the economy shrank by 2.6% from the previous quarter in the three months ending in June. Forecasters say the economy probably is shrinking in the current quarter. Imports tumbled 10.9% from a year ago in November in 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.

The announcement last week allowed more room for local governments to set their own rules. For example, most restaurants in Beijing still need to have a negative test result in order to serve food. Rules for government offices are even more stringent than those for restaurants.

The Light at the End of a Long Tunnel: Observing the Fluctuations of the City of Guangzhou, China

The editor-in- chief of that’s is Lars hamer. He has been in China for a while. The views expressed are of his own. Follow him on Twitter @LarsHamer1. CNN has more opinion on it.

It all feels like a light at the end of what has been a very long tunnel. Scanning QR codes every time I entered a building, daily tests, and the constant thought that I could be sent to a quarantine facility for being a “secondary close contact” (being near someone who has interacted with a positive case), have all dominated the majority of my time in China.

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. The same could happen to me.

To my surprise, nothing of the sort. I took a Covid-19 test and underwhelmingly, that was it. I had the freedom to leave my house and go about my day without restriction before my result came out.

If this had occurred weeks earlier, I would have been labeled a close contact and therefore powerless to avoid the facility which was very similar to a prison.

Over the next few days, the Guangzhou I came to in 2018 was almost back to normal. The streets were lined with people. 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.

Just look at the new measure forbidding the blocking of fire exits in the event of a lockdown, for example. People who are affected can take a break from eachother at home. Quarantine facilities will soon be a thing of the past.

People who have not seen each other in a long time were gathering in bars and restaurants, with codes being ripped down from walls, as their movements were 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 was starting to consider leaving the country as I began to feel the strain.

It was a moment of pure disbelief. The city of Guangzhou had almost 8000 cases that day like those in the city of Shanghai in April.

Concerns have arisen that the Chinese leadership may be concealing negative information about the Pandemic following the easing of restrictions.

A notice on the commission’s website said it stopped publishing daily figures on numbers of COVID-19 cases where no symptoms are detected since it was “impossible to accurately grasp the actual number of asymptomatic infected persons,” which have generally accounted for the vast majority of new infections. Confirmation cases are reported 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.

A group of people were waiting at a Beijing hospital’s fever clinic for their test results. Nurses in full-body white protective gear checked in patients one by one.

The people in the line of blue tents were not standing in the cold. One person in the queue took out a bottle of disinfectant and sprayed it around her as she waited.

A group of people waited in line for cough medication at a pharmacy across the street. 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 had bought two packages of Lianhua Qingwen, a Chinese herbal remedy, saying that each customer was restricted from buying any more than that.

An investigation into the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on Beijing’s offices, shopping district, and community offices during the Lunar New Year

The Chinese government admitted it had updated its methods for counting deaths caused by the virus in order to keep its official tally accurate.

The State Department said that since Tuesday, only emergency services had been offered by the U.S. consulars in China’s northeastern and central cities.

Hospitals have been struggling to remain staffed, as packages were piling up at distribution points because of a shortage of motorized tricycle delivery drivers.

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

The government shocked the world last week by saying it was ending many of the strictest measures it had used over the past three years.

The impact of the outbreak in the city was visible in the upmarket shopping district Sanlitun 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 across Beijing, as offices, shops and residential communities report being understaffed or shifting working arrangements as employees fall ill with the virus. Others stay at home to protect themselves from infections.

One community worker told CNN that 21 of the 24 workers on her Beijing neighborhood committee office, tasked with coordinating residential matters and activities, had fallen ill in recent days.

“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.”

“It is impossible to accurately grasp the actual number of asymptomatic infections,” the NHC said in a notice, citing reduced levels of official testing.

A Beijing-based lawyer and formerchairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China said that he had seen a surge in Covid in his office.

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.

So far, however, there were only 50 severe and critical cases in hospitals, most of whom had underlying health conditions, Sun Chunlan, China’s top official in charge of managing Covid, said during an inspection of Beijing’s epidemic response on Tuesday.

Sun made assurances that the supply of medicine was not going to be affected by the surge of purchases, as he called for more feverish clinics and said that the number of new infections in Beijing was increasing rapidly.

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.

COVID-19: A crisis in China preparing for a nationwide reopening and its impact on hospitals, crematoriums and funeral homes

The local government in southwest China made tea from orange peel and monk fruit because it was the most efficient way to prevent infections. Dr. Zhong said weeks ago that he hasn’t found any medication that is effective at preventing a COVID infection.

But experts have warned that the country is poorly prepared for such a drastic exit, having fallen short on bolstering the elderly vaccination rate, upping surge and intensive care capacity in hospitals, and stockpiling antiviral medications.

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.

The surge of infections would “likely overload many local health systems across the country,” said the research paper, released last week on the Medrxiv preprint server and which has yet to undergo peer review.

The study says that lifting restrictions in all provinces will lead to demands for 1.5 to 2.5 times of surge hospital capacity.

The first deaths were reported since the easing of restrictions on December 7, although there was a surge in demand for funeral homes in Beijing in recent weeks.

Despite the lack of official reports of carbon dioxide deaths in Beijing, crematoriums and funeral homes are already overwhelmed. The wait for cremations at the biggest crematorium in Beijing was 10 days, according to staff, and a line of hearses and families filled the intake lot earlier this week.

Some major cities are facing a rise in infections. In the financial hub of Shanghai, schools have moved most classes online starting from Monday. In Guangzhou, authorities have told students who are taking online classes that they should not prepare for the school year to start.

In the megacity of Chongqing in the southwest, authorities announced on Sunday that public sector workers testing positive for Covid can go to work “as normal” – a remarkable turnaround for a city that only weeks ago had been in the throes of a mass lockdown.

As COVID-19 spreads largely unchecked from Beijing to Shanghai, China is bracing for a second surge, jumpstarted by millions of people who are planning holiday travel from cities back to their rural villages, where the health care system is far patchier.

The current wave is expected to last until mid-January, according to the speaker. The second wave will last from late January to mid-February next year due to mass travel leading up to the lunar new year holiday.

Every year, hundreds of millions of people who have left their hometowns to build a life in China’s fast growing cities pour into trains, buses and planes to see their family – a weeks-long travel rush known as the largest annual human migration on Earth.

The About-Face of China’s Digital Diagnosis of Covid-Politics: Detecting the Violation of the State Policy

According to Zhong, 85% of patients who are exposed to the variant won’t be re-infecting for a long time. Studies suggest that most people will be re-hospitalized every two to three years.

The Chinese internet was not taken unawares by the about-face. Posts juxtamping before and after state policy change have received 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.

Most of the online discussion centers on how to deals with the aftermath of the policy change and what preventative measures and treatments are available.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/20/1143413739/confusion-and-falsehoods-spread-as-china-reverses-its-zero-covid-policy

Why the Global Times and The Chinese Diaspora Have Done Their Research: Implications for Medical Research and Public Health in the Era of COVID

Untested remedies to fight COVID have again flourished in recent days. An internal medicine doctor who’s a member of China’s prestigious Academy of Engineering recommended the unproven method of rinsing out your mouth using iced salt water daily. Some online commenters were confused. “Wasn’t salt water rinse debunked two years ago? Does an iced version make a difference?” One wrote on a website.

The chaos and uncertainty we are experiencing reminds me of the atmosphere in early 2020 when COVID was first spreading, where I work in the University of Texas. “It’s kind of flying in the dark.”

Non-state media outlets are at risk of government cracking down. Ding Xiangyuan was a well-read online health information outlet that debunked health myths and criticized the government’s promotion of traditional Chinese medicine as well as the zero-COVID policy before it was suspended from popular social media platforms in August. Its accounts on the popular Chinese social media site, Weibo, remain silent today.

A recent example was how the Communist Party-controlled newspaper, The Global Times, cited a misleading report in the British tabloid, Daily Mail, that suggested without evidence that vaccine maker Moderna manufactured the virus. The Global Times extensively cited the coverage, using it to attack other unsupported theories about the virus’s origin, including the one that suggested it leaked from a government research lab in Wuhan. Other smaller social media accounts made videos of the report, putting “British Media” in the headlines.

The Chinese diaspora has been helpful in sharing their own COVID experiences with other people in China, knowing that in most cases it will not be that serious.

She points out that a lot of rural and elderly residents rely on television and family members in larger cities to stay informed about what’s happening in social media. Many are vulnerable to the disease, live in places where healthcare resources are scarce, and aren’t adept at finding information on social media.

NPR reported that public health authorities don’t always base their messages on science but do include considerations of pragmatism and culturally-based.

Chen says that scientists have some soul searching to do in the next couple of years. How do we conduct ourselves if we know that politics will play a role in public health and science? What [are] our ethics?”

COVID-19 deaths and superspreader events in China: What are they telling us about the public? – Wang Guiqiang of Peking University’s No. 1 Hospital

Deaths that occur in patients with pre-existing illnesses are not counted as COVID-19 deaths, said Wang Guiqiang, the head of infectious disease at Peking University’s No. 1 Hospital.

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.

An Associated Press reporter saw multiple people being wheeled out of funeral homes in Beijing last week, and two relatives told the AP their loved ones had died after testing positive for COVID-19. Last week, however, the country did not report any deaths due to COVID-19.

The experts have always advised authorities to be cautious while estimating the number of deaths. Problems in death counts have raised questions around the world.

According to the World Health Organization, over 15 million people died from the first couple of years of the Pandemic season, due to overwhelmed health systems. The death toll for that period was over 6 million.

“I don’t think the village doctors or the county hospital can cope with the increased number of severe cases,” says Wang, a researcher from the center on China’s economy and institutions. “I think the rural villagers are just left on their own in a dark COVID winter.”

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.

“In China the messaging has to be really careful right now, since we will have a new year coming up and people are going to travel to the rural communities, so it’s going to be very important to inform the public that it’s coming,” says Ali Mokdad, an epidemiologist and chief strategy officer at the University of Washington’s Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

In its latest briefing, IHME forecasts up to 1 million deaths in 2023 if China does not maintain social distancing policies — a prediction echoed by another model released by researchers at University of Hong Kong last week.

Sun Caijun, a restaurant owner in Beijing, says if she wants to go back to her hometown in northern India, she must have a good party and set off some fireworks. “Of course I am planning on returning home, because Beijing bans firecrackers!”

“People from the cities have been coming over and buying all of our medicines, or they’ll order online and have our pharmacies mail it over to them,” says Li Qian, a recent college graduate, who lives in a village in China’s southern Jiangsu province. She worries most about her asthmatic grandparents; the nearest hospital, she says, is two hours away.

The focus on containing the virus for nearly three years has now left China little prepared for treating the infected. The council’s senior fellow following public health says vaccinations of the elderly and stocktaking of antivirals were all dropped from the agenda.

The number they are willing to show the number of deaths is almost laughable according to Ray Yip who founded the Center for Disease Control’s office in China.

The hospitals that NPR visited this week in Beijing were busy but orderly, and a few elderly patients in the lobby had to be put down because there were not enough beds.

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 says he worked through his symptoms, because he does not receive paid sick leave and could not afford to go to a Beijing hospital. You have to be someone who dares to risk their lives if you’re a delivery guy.

One man waiting in line said they spent days looking for a hospital to take his grandpa after he tested positive for carbon dioxide, but they couldn’t find one.

The figures cited were presented during an internal meeting of China’s National Health Commission (NHC) on Wednesday, according to both outlets – which cited sources familiar with the matter or involved in the discussions. The NHC summary of Wednesday’s meeting said it delved into the treatment of patients affected by the new outbreak.

On Friday, a copy of theNHC meeting notes was seen by CNN on Chinese social media, but the document has not been verified and NHC did not respond to a request for comment.

The Financial Times said it was Sun Yang – a deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention – who presented the figures to officials during the closed-door briefing, citing two people familiar with the matter.

The number of symptomatic Covid cases in China remained unreported during the closed-door meeting of the National Health Care Association (NHC)

The figures are in stark contrast to the public data of the NHC, which reported just 62,592 symptomatic Covid cases in the first twenty days of December.

The minutes of the Wednesday closed-door NHC meeting made no reference to discussions concerning how many people may have died in China, according to both reports and the document CNN viewed.

Because of the increase in cases, China has stopped most public testing booths, meaning there is no way to measure the scale of infections in the country.