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After the Chinese government announced the “Twenty Points” and “New Ten Points” to relax the new crown prevention and control measures, the virus spread rapidly in many cities, causing many chaos. In many cities, it is difficult to see a doctor in a hospital, and it is difficult to find a medicine for cold and fever.
Mike Ryan (Mike Ryan), executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies program, said that before China decided to abandon the zero-clearing policy, the number of new crown infections had already exploded.
A sharp turn in policy led to an outbreak?
After protests against epidemic prevention and control measures broke out across China in November, China made a sharp turn in its prevention and control policies. In early December, high-level Chinese government officials held a symposium on epidemic prevention and control for two consecutive days. Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan stated at both symposiums that the pathogenicity of the Omicron virus has weakened and that prevention and control measures will be optimized. Unlike most previous meetings, Sun Chunlan rarely mentioned insisting on the “zeroing” policy in these two occasions.
On December 7, the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council of China issued the “Notice on Further Optimizing and Implementing the Prevention and Control Measures of the New Coronary Pneumonia Epidemic”, proposing “ten new measures” and moving towards the direction of gradual opening up. Measures include reducing the scope of nucleic acid testing, and no longer requiring negative nucleic acid certificates and health codes for people from different regions.
The outside world generally believes that China has actually ended its consistent zero-clearing policy and turned to coexistence with the virus. But after the policy shifted, the number of infections in China ushered in explosive growth.
However, the current official Chinese data does not reflect the actual number of infections. According to data from China’s National Health Commission, 31 provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities) in China and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps reported 2,157 new confirmed cases on December 15. Since it is difficult to accurately grasp the actual number of asymptomatic infections, the Chinese government has announced that it will no longer publish data on asymptomatic infections from December 14.
Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies programme, dismissed claims that the policy reversal led to a spike in cases, saying China’s coronavirus infection numbers had exploded long before China decided to abandon its strict zero-clearing policy. increase.
“The disease is spreading intensively because the control measures themselves have not stopped the disease. China has strategically decided that this is no longer the best option,” Ryan said.
He also pointed out that the challenges that China and other countries still face are whether the people who need to be vaccinated are adequately vaccinated, whether they have received the correct vaccine and the correct dose, and when these people were last vaccinated.
Panic buying and healthcare infections
The sudden sharp turn of policy and the surge in infections undoubtedly detonated the panic among the people. In many cities in mainland China, there were long queues at hospitals, and anti-epidemic items such as cold medicine and fever medicine were snapped up, and even canned yellow peaches and electrolyte water were snapped up.
The panic buying has even spread to Hong Kong and Australia. Some pharmacies in Hong Kong have shortages of cold medicines such as “Biliton” and “Happy Cold Supplement”, and some pharmacies have begun to restrict the purchase of cold medicines.
In Box Hill, a suburb of Melbourne with one of Australia’s largest Chinese communities, a pharmacist said several pharmacies had sold out of pridoxine, Archyde.com reported.
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China Central Television reported that more than 160 industrial enterprises under Sinopharm Group are increasing production 24 hours a day, especially for some key varieties, which have tripled their daily production capacity.
32-year-old Zhang Xin (pseudonym) was infected on Wednesday, and almost her whole family was “infected”, including her mother, aunt and 90-year-old grandmother. She told BBC Chinese that the country should open up in an orderly manner, not all of a sudden.
“Ordinary people are caught off guard in the face of the epidemic. In terms of drug purchases, there should be restrictions on purchases, so that people will not hoard too many drugs at home. People who are actually infected will go to the hospital for medical treatment due to lack of drugs, causing medical resources to be tight. Aggravate the infection,” she said.
Zhang Xin said that her 90-year-old grandmother was seriously ill and had to queue for a long time to get to the hospital. After she got there, the doctor only prescribed some cold medicine and cough medicine.
“For the elderly with underlying diseases, green channels should be set up to seek medical treatment,” she said.
In addition, there has also been a collective infection in China’s medical care.
Chinese media Caixin reported that several major hospitals in Beijing have recently called outpatients who had made an appointment, advising them to postpone their visits or switch to online consultations because there are positive cases in the hospitals. The doctors found that there were colleagues around them who continued to show symptoms, and the manpower was tight.
The battle between clearing and letting go
There are some voices on the Internet who miss China’s previous zero-zero policy. They believe that the “zero-zero” policy is necessary to protect the elderly and children.
A Weibo netizen “Expulsed fans every day” said that he is an absolute clean-up faction, because the new crown is very dangerous to the elderly, pregnant women and doctors. “Medical resources have always been in short supply. If there is no doctor, it will be even more crowded. And this will lead to repeated infections, that is to say, doctors will face repeated infections. Pregnant women will also have repeated fevers throughout pregnancy. It is too dangerous for the fetus.”
Some netizens also pointed out that the source of the prevention and control chaos is the issue of policy formulation. Weibo netizen “风雪雪海光” said: “Dynamic clearing failed, there is no preparation, and it quickly turned to coexistence. Those who make policies don’t show up. It’s irresponsible to let people scold each other every day!”
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Regarding the view that clearing is better than letting go, Jin Dongyan, a professor at the School of Biomedical Sciences of the University of Hong Kong, pointed out to BBC Chinese that “zeroing” is not sustainable, and the same situation will happen if the “zeroing” policy continues. If you want to take an open route, it is natural to face the full-scale outbreak of the epidemic. “China is now open. Ideally, it should learn from the lessons of other countries and what can be done better.”
Jin Dongyan agrees with Mike Ryan that the number of cases has increased rapidly before China loosened its controls.
China’s Spring Festival travel will start next month. Regarding the large-scale movement of people, Jin Dongyan believes: “There is no essential difference from now. It depends on whether they (the government) control it or not. Generally speaking, the Spring Festival travel will increase the spread of the virus, but The question is what is their philosophy now, whether they want the virus to spread or not to spread.”