China’s financial hub Shanghai continues to report record high Covid-19 cases as Beijing hasn’t shown any sign of relaxing preventive measures. Shanghai reported over 27,000 coronavirus cases on Thursday, a new high, a day after President Xi Jinping said that the country must continue with its strict ‘dynamic Covid clearance’ policy and pandemic control measures.
Shanghai is battling China’s worst Covid-19 outbreak since the virus first emerged in Wuhan in late 2019, with its 25 million residents remaining largely under lockdown, though restrictions were partially eased in some areas this week.
Wider curbs to stop the spread of the highly infectious Omicron variant have led to logistical and supply chain disruptions that are taking a growing economic toll, adding to expectations that China’s central bank will soon announce more stimulus measures.
Here is all you need to know why Shanghai is suffering and implications of China’s Covid-policy:
Frustration in Shanghai
Millions of people have been locked in the city of Shanghai, triggering frustration on social media over the difficulties of getting enough food and China’s policy that requires anyone testing positive, symptomatic or not, to be centrally quarantined, where many people have complained about poor conditions.
Raising hopes for a shift in policy, on Wednesday the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a guide on home quarantining on its social media.
The CDC’s guide – quarantine in a well-ventilated room stocked with masks, sanitizer and other gear – raised hopes that the central quarantine rule might be relaxed.
However, when asked by a social media user in an online comments section about who might be eligible for home quarantine, the CDC referred to the old rules. Shanghai authorities also gave no hint of any change in approach during a Thursday briefing.
Poor Quarantine Conditions
While the Xi’s government have been supporting aggressive Covid strategy, residents are frustrated under restrictions.
On Thursday, an article titled “The people of Shanghai’s patience has reached its limit” by a blogger called Lady Moye, enumerating the human toll of Shanghai’s hardline anti-Covid measures including family separations, went viral on social media platform WeChat.
One comment, “Whoever deletes this article should die a sorry death,” received over half a million likes in seven hours, before the article was removed for violating regulations, according to a WeChat notice.
A video provided on Thursday to Reuters from inside one quarantine centre showed people in camp beds separated by less than an arm’s length. An occupant said more than 200 people there shared four toilets, with no showers.
Autocracy Hurts Everyone
China has, for long, ignored experts’ advice of abandoning its costly strategy and learn to coexist with the virus, preferably a milder variant.
But Beijing insists on following the 2020 Covid playbook, that relies on mass testing, quarantine and lockdowns. The approach has already hurt millions of people’s lives, their business and sent lakhs to makeshift quarantine camps and deprived many non-Covid patients of medical treatments.
According to a law scholar, Ye Qing, China isn’t countering the pandemic, but it creating disasters.
Another reason behind China’s strategy could be XI Jinping seeking third term ahead of an important Communist Party congress later this year. Xi wants to use China’s success story of containing the virus to prove that its top-down governance model is superior to that of liberal democracies.
Respite Unlikely
As the cases in Shanghai continue to surge, the chances of further easing the lockdown seemed to have waned after Xi called for sticking to current preventive policies.
Xi Jinping during his visit to south China’s Hainan island indicated there would be no immediate change of approach in pandemic control measures.
“It is risky for Covid-19 patients who are asymptomatic to stay home instead of in centralised quarantine, as they might cause further transmission and miss the optimal treatment period,” he reportedly said, according to Hindustan Times.
(With inputs from agencies)
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