The Chinese deputy prime minister in charge of overseeing epidemic prevention policies recognized today that the country is in a “new situation” and that the virulence of covid-19 “is weakening”, signaling the end of the ‘zero cases’ strategy .
Sun Chunlan “listened to the opinions and suggestions of experts” from China’s National Health Commission on how to “improve containment measures”, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
In addition to the Omicron variant of covid-19 having a “reduced” virulence, the official stressed that “more and more people are being vaccinated” and that “greater experience is being accumulated in containing the virus”.
It was Sun – the only woman on the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party, until the organization’s 20th Congress, which took place last October – who had the role of traveling to cities that had registered outbreaks of the new coronavirus, to urge the imposition of of confinements and restrictions, in the last two years.
The official has now asked for efforts to “optimize” the response against covid-19 and “improve” diagnostic, detection, treatment and quarantine measures, demanding that the health system increase the reserves of medicines and other resources, for the treatment of patients.
Sun’s meeting with the experts came after a weekend marked by protests in several cities in China, against the strategy of ‘zero cases’ of covid-19.
China’s policy includes imposing lockdowns on entire neighborhoods or cities, which can take weeks or months, constantly conducting mass testing, and isolating all positive cases and their direct contacts in designated facilities, often under conditions degrading.
This strategy has generated a succession of tragedies and cases of abuse of authority, culminating in large-scale protests, sparked by a deadly fire in a building in the city of Urumqi, in northwest China, last Friday. Protesters say that blockades in the neighborhood, as part of epidemic prevention measures, delayed access for the fire truck. Residents were also unable to escape the building, whose door was blocked.
To date, the Chinese leadership has justified the extreme measures with the fact that China has a large population, uneven levels of development between regions and “insufficient medical resources”.
According to official data, since the beginning of the pandemic, 5,233 people have died in China due to infection with the new coronavirus. Studies support that the Chinese strategy has saved millions of lives.
