Bars closed for 15 days. Stations to test for covid at the entrance of amusement parks. Suspended flights and train journeys. Confinements in two schools. In the new wave of outbreaks of the delta variant of covid across China, the city of Beijing has so far detected just over a handful, about 40 cases among 22 million residents, but is doubling down on its precautionary measures. In a country that has bet on maintaining the zero tolerance Against the pandemic, the authorities do not want to take risks, whatever the cost. And less than a week from a fundamental political meeting for his Communist Party and President Xi Jinping, the plenary session of the Central Committee.
This Friday the National Health Commission announced 78 new local infections in China. That brings to 1,129 the number of infected with symptoms in this new wave of outbreaks, which already affects 19 Chinese provinces and by geographical extension is the highest since the first outbreak detected in Wuhan at the beginning of the pandemic. To these figures must be added another 426 asymptomatic cases, which the Chinese authorities count separately.
The rest of the world, including countries such as Australia or Singapore that initially opted for the absolute eradication of the virus, has resigned to living with the covid, to a greater or lesser degree, and gradually returning to normality. China has decided to resist, to keep its borders closed almost hermetically and to continue a policy of zero tolerance against the virus that has so far left an incidence of less than 100,000 official cases among its immense population. Chinese President Xi Jinping himself has not traveled abroad for 21 months, when the pandemic broke out, and has not attended summits such as the current COP26 in Glasgow on climate change, or the G-20 at the weekend. spent in Rome. Beijing believes that, in the long run, such intolerance will bring it financial benefits. And politicians.
In the capital, the precautions against the covid are patent. Since the new wave of infections began, immediately after the national holiday holidays in early October, the Beijing authorities advise its inhabitants not to go outside the municipal territory unless strictly necessary. If you travel, and residents move to places where a case has been confirmed, they run the risk of not being able to return until they have completed a 21-day quarantine. In response to the authorities’ request to be extremely careful, the streets appear more deserted; the subway, less traveled. The watchers who take temperatures and data on those who enter have returned to the gates of residential complexes, and some of the most popular tourist attractions have closed their doors. This week, Beijing airports canceled half of their flights due to the new outbreaks, and train stations have done the same with routes from 23 cities with confirmed cases.
Radical measures are also being taken in other cities. Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu – in the northwest, and one of the provinces hardest hit by the new outbreak – has confined its four million inhabitants. In Chongqing, with 23 million people, massive tests are being carried out; the eastern city of Changzhou has suspended face-to-face school classes and switched to teaching them online. The Disneyland theme park in Shanghai closed with 30,000 people inside for tests after a contagion alert; two trains en route to Beijing stopped mid-journey last week after a member of their crew was identified as a positive contact, and the 211 passengers were quarantined in nearby cities.
“Each locality must firmly comply with the foreign defense policy against importation [del virus], internal defense against outbreaks ”, the spokesman for the National Health Commission, Mi Feng, declared at a press conference. “The current control measures cannot be relaxed.”
The inflexibility has been extreme before the proximity of the plenary session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. The meeting will bring together the highest of the Chinese hierarchy for four days next week in a hotel in Beijing, where a resolution on the history of the party – the third in a century – is expected to further reinforce the figure of its secretary general. and head of state, Xi Jinping.
Also contributing to the toughness is the proximity of the 2022 Winter Olympics, which Beijing will host, and whose opening is less than 100 days. That competition will take place in a bubble as strict or more than Tokyo’s, without audiences from other countries.
But the application of tough containment measures against the virus has been part of the Xi government’s strategy since the early days of the pandemic. A strategy that has brought significant benefits: China has been the first major economy to start the recovery after the crisis, and its exports have soared. The success of guidelines that are difficult or impossible to apply in other political systems has catapulted national pride, prompting Beijing to brag about the superiority of its model.
A zero tolerance against the coronavirus has become one of the elements of the Party’s legitimacy, as Xi is clearly preparing to break with China’s recent political tradition and begin a third term of at least five years in 2022.
“Under the firm leadership of the Central Committee of the Party, with Comrade Xi Jinping as the nucleus, our country has overcome the impact of the pandemic, coordinated measures against the disease, while socioeconomic development has achieved significant results,” published this Tuesday the People’s Daily, the CCP newspaper.
Full support of the population
The message creeps. “In China, in the fight against the coronavirus, people are the most important thing. In the West, money is the most important thing, ”says Wang, a worker in the restaurant sector, as he queues for a COVID test at a street stall in central Beijing. Except for the foreign community, dwindling due to the harsh restrictions on entry into the country, and well-to-do circles accustomed to traveling abroad, support for the official strategy is majority.
There are no signs that the zero covid policy will, therefore, relax in the near future, despite the fact that the percentage of the vaccinated population in China already exceeds 76% and about 2.3 billion doses have been inoculated, according to the figures from the National Health Commission. Given the low incidence of covid within the country’s borders, it is unknown exactly how effective the Chinese formulas are, especially against the delta variant. Herd immunity will perhaps be reached, according to Chinese experts, when 80% of vaccinated are reached.
Although some scientists have spoken of the need to live with the virus and relax the measures, those voices have been quickly silenced. On the contrary, the main Chinese expert in the fight against the pandemic, Zhong Nanshan, has defended the advisability of continuing the current strategy.
“Some countries have decided to open up completely, even though they still have some infections,” the respiratory disease specialist told the state television channel CCTV. “That has led to an increase in infections in the last two months, and therefore they have decided to re-impose restrictions. These posture changes end up being more expensive. The psychological impact on citizens and society is greater ”.
According to Zhong, the current Chinese strategy of closing abroad and internal heavy-handedness against the virus is still going to be maintained “for a considerably long term.” “At the moment, the zero transmission strategy is not too expensive; in fact, it is a relatively cheaper method ”, he considers.
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