China is building hundreds of thousands of permanent coronavirus testing facilities and expanding quarantine centers to many of its largest cities as part of its Covid zero-cost policy, despite the country’s economic and human cost. most populous in the world.
Residents of Shanghai woke up on Thursday with an announcement that blockade measures and mass tests will be carried out in Minhang district, home to more than 2 million people, for at least two days. The directive was issued just a week after President Xi Jinping’s administration declared victory in defending the city from the pandemic after a two-month confinement.
Tough restrictions on dozens of cities have brought the country to the brink of recession for the second time in three decades. But while measures have eased in many areas, experts believe the government’s virus infrastructure program is designed to maintain massive testing and quarantine policies until 2023.
Officials rush to execute instructions to be able to test entire city populations in 24 hours. Larger metropolises should now have test sites available within a 15-minute walk of residents ’homes, and temporary facilities are being replaced by permanent booths from private medical companies.
The country’s 31 provinces and regions are also following Beijing’s orders to prepare new hospitals and quarantine facilities in the event of an increase in Shanghai-style infections.
Yanzhong Huang, a senior member of Global Health’s Foreign Affairs Council think tank, said such measures demonstrated Beijing’s commitment to zero-Covid “despite this growing economic and social cost associated with this approach.”
“The government believes they could overcome the virus. But we know that for the Omicron variant this is unrealistic. And for an even more transmissible variant, this will make it even less feasible,” he said.
You are viewing a snapshot of an interactive graphic. This is probably because your browser is offline or JavaScript is turned off.
As of April, China already had 400 makeshift hospitals completed or under construction with a capacity of more than 560,000 beds, according to public comments by National Health Commission officials. Authorities in cities with more than 10 million people have at least 1,500 hospital beds available in centralized quarantine facilities, as well as security centers that can be put into use with a warning of ‘a few days.
“Admission and isolation capacity should be further strengthened and hospitals should be designated … and centralized isolation points should be planned and prepared in advance,” wrote senior official Ma Xiaowei. from the NHC in Qiushi, the flagship magazine of the Chinese Communist Party last month.
An example of rapid progress, Ningbo, an 8-minute city south of Shanghai, opened its first centralized Covid-19 quarantine facility last month with 4,356 isolation rooms, including 200 for quarantined families. as well as 880 staff rooms.
Most major Chinese cities have already set requirements for regular Covid testing, regardless of symptoms. The Beijing city government is demanding that residents of the capital show a negative Covid test done in the previous 72 hours to travel freely, including on public transportation.
Shanghai has established about 15,000 test sites for its 26 million inhabitants and Lanzhou, a northwestern city of 4 million, has the capacity to test about 150,000 people daily.
Covid-19 test booths are being set up in cities across the country, including Shanghai © Bloomberg
China’s zero-Covid policy has been successful in containing the Omicron variant and keeping the death toll low, compared to countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States. The number of daily cases has been close to the three-month lows with a seven-day average of about 150, below a high of about 30,000 in April.
But many are frustrated at the prospect of zero-Covid’s policy being extended to a quarter of a year. “Covid’s zero policy is total madness: it’s inhuman and not very successful,” said a Beijing-based art curator. “The governments of Shanghai and Beijing are lying to the people. In Shanghai, they said they would not close. . . then in the end it was 60 days “, added the person.
Eight Chinese cities and 74 million people are now in total or partial blockade, compared to 133 million people a week ago and 355 million people in April, according to a survey by Japanese bank Nomura.
Authorities are also allocating large sums of resources to the enactment of the zero-Covid policy, with some local governments being forced to divert funds from other priorities such as poverty alleviation and infrastructure.
Potential economic costs are significant. If all cities adopted Beijing’s 72-hour testing requirement, 814 million people would have to be cleaned regularly at a cost of 1.7 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, according to a Nomura analysis.
China has already canceled two major international events in recent weeks. Organizers of the Shanghai International Film Festival said this week that the event, scheduled to open on Friday, would be delayed until 2023. The announcement followed China’s decision last month to withdraw from hosting next year’s Asian Cup football competition due to Covid’s concerns.
You are viewing a snapshot of an interactive graphic. This is probably because your browser is offline or JavaScript is turned off.
Jane Duckett, director of the Scottish Research Center at China University at Glasgow, said the mandatory periodic tests consumed resources “that could be better used to improve vaccination rates among the largest and most vulnerable groups”.
But Andy Chen, an analyst at consulting firm Trivium China, said Beijing would review its policy after Xi was confirmed for a third term as the country’s leader later this year.
“These measures. . . they are a reaction to the mismanagement of the recent outbreak in Shanghai, where precisely targeted and guided containment measures from the outset left the spread of Omicron out of control. Creating regular testing sites in big cities aims to detect and detect infections soon, ”he said.
Recommended
But Huang said that “this zero-Covid approach will be maintained, perhaps until 2023,” despite the lack of epidemiological benefits.
“It will not eradicate the virus,” he added. “New variants continue to grow and expand.[and]when you seal the population of the virus, you also maintain the immunity gap between China and the rest of the world. “
Report by Arjun Neil Alim in Beijing, Edward White in Seoul and Andy Lin in Hong Kong