The episode of Covid-19: a woman in China’s capital vents frustration with the governments zero-covid policies and promises to end the pandemic-era regime

China is bracing for an unprecedented wave of Covid-19 cases as it dismantles large parts of its repressive zero-Covid policy, with a leading expert warning Omicron variants were “spreading rapidly” and signs of an outbreak rattling the country’s capital.

The video of her screaming abuse at hazmat-suited workers below went viral on social media and is thought to be an expression of the frustration of the people of China with the governments zero-covid policy.

The woman has been under quarantine for half a year since returning from university in the summer, she shouts at the workers. They stare back, seemingly unmoved.

While most Asian economies – even those with previously hardline zero-Covid stances – are abandoning pandemic-era restrictions, authorities in China remain zealous in theirs, repeatedly insisting this week in state-run media articles that the battle against the virus remains “winnable.”

It is a claim that comes despite the fact that there are Flare Infections just days before the Communist Party congress, which will cement his place as the country’s most powerful leader in decades.

Observers will be watching the twice-a-decade meeting for signs that the party is taking a more moderate stance when it comes to its zero- Covid stance which has been blamed for contributing to mounting problems in the economy.

The China War: No Covid or Not a Hero? Observations of the Decay of the National Health Commission on Cybercrime

The online photos posted on Thursday appeared to show a rare public protest against the president of China. Say no to the test and have a bowl of food. No to lockdown, yes to freedom. No to lies, yes to dignity. No to cultural revolution, yes to reform. No to great leader, yes to vote. Don’t be a slave, be a citizen,” read one banner hung over an overpass despite the heightened security surrounding the Congress.

There was a protest at the site of the search results. Before long, key words including “Beijing,” “Haidian,” “warrior,” “brave man,” and even “courage” were restricted from search.

Many accounts on Weibo and WeChat, the super-app essential for daily life in China, have been banned after commenting on the protest.

Still, many spoke out to express their support and awe. Some shared the Chinese pop hit “Lonely Warrior” in a veiled reference to the protester, who some called a “hero,” while others swore never to forget, posting under the hashtag: “I saw it.”

With state media articles this week showing the country may change tack post-congress, there is no chance of the country changing its zero-Covid approach into the future.

The lockdown also wracked havoc on the economy. China’s GDP shrunk by 2.6% in the three months ending in June, while youth unemployment hit a record high of nearly 20%.

According to a report last Friday, almost 250 million people in China may have caught Covid in the first 20 days of December, according to an internal meeting of the National Health Commission. They cited sources familiar with the matter or involved in the discussions.

The China Water Crisis after the Shanghai Panicked Outbreak and the First Result of the Chinese Covid Vaccination Act (Covid-2014-03)

Anxious about the possibility of unpredictable and impromptu snap shutterings, some people in the city have reportedly been drinking more water than they need.

The panic buying was made worse by an announcement that the water authorities in Shanghai are taking action to ensure the quality of their water.

The reason for the increase in infections is not known, but authorities are trying to contain the spread of a strain of coronaviruses that has been found in China.

The country has also seen an uptick in cases in domestic tourist destinations, despite its strict curbs having discouraged people from traveling or spending over China’s Golden Week holiday in early October.

The regional Department of Education has put more than 240,000 university students on lock down due to the latest outbreak, according to a deputy director. There was an outbreak on campus and it led to the firing of the university Communist Party boss after 39 students tested positive.

There is a situation in far western Xinjiang, where some 22 million people have been banned from leaving the region, and are required to stay. Xinjiang recorded 403 new cases on Thursday, according to an official tally.

Beijing does not seem to want to move from its hardline stance. The Communist Party wrote commentaries for the last three days repeating that China wouldn’t back down.

The battle against Covid was winnable, it said. Other countries that had reopened and eased restrictions had done so because they had no choice, it said, as they had failed to “effectively control the epidemic in a timely manner.”

The announcement on Monday that the limits on foreign tourists in China will be lifted in January is the most significant step towards ending the limits. The number of days the qast is reduced from seven to five last month.

After a meeting of the Communist Party’s top decision-making body on Friday, leaders pledged to maintain Covid protocols while stressing the need to minimize economic and social disruptions.

The effects of new Covid-19 measures on the Hang Seng index and China’s economic and social wolf: a report by Shen Hongbing

The zero-tolerance approach has faced increasing challenges from highly transmissible new variants, and its heavy economic and social costs have drawn mounting public backlash.

The easing of the measures will see authorities scrap the so-called “circuit breaker” mechanism, under which China-bound flights were suspended if an airline was found to carry a certain number of passengers who tested positive for Covid upon landing.

International passengers will now have to take a pre-departure test, but it will be one instead of two, and they will only have to stay in America for three days after arriving.

Markets responded well to the changes as international investors were jittery. The Hang Seng Index shot up 7% just after the noon break as China’s benchmark index rose 2.5%.

People who are identified as close contacts of Covid-19 cases will have shortened sterilization at centralized government-operated facilities, from 7 days to 5 days and three days at home under the new guidelines.

The measures are about “optimizing” existing Covid prevention and control policy, Shen Hongbing, a disease control official, told a news conference last week. He said that they are not an easing of control, opening or lying flat.

The government reported the highest number of new domestically transmitted cases this year on Thursday, and the authorities were bracing for a worse situation.

Seasonal COVID-19: What is the new normal for vaccines, diseases, and infectious diseases? The challenge of seasonal viruses in the United States and beyond

It’s tough to predict what the new normal might look like for seasonal viruses. If many of the susceptible people get infected in the coming months, next year’s flu season could be tamer, as some of the immune debt is ‘paid off’. But it’s not yet clear whether COVID-19 will become a seasonal illness such as flu and RSV, or whether it will continue as it has been, with sporadic peaks throughout the year.

But COVID-19 restrictions started being lifted last year. So why is the surge kicking in only now? He’s worried that flu and the vaccine would come back last year. But the influenza season overall was mild in the Northern Hemisphere. The peak of the disease came in the summer of 2021 and is an odd timing that might have stopped the spread of the disease. Factors such as temperature and humidity play a part in transmitting the virus, and that peak “was not [at] a time that was environmentally favourable to RSV”, says Virginia Pitzer, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health in New Haven, Connecticut.

Scott Hensley is animmunologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and says that viruses are coming back with a vengeance. “It is possible that this year will be sort of the granddaddy of them all in terms of flu.”

Hensley says that this is because the population “is more immunologically naive than what we would expect in most years”. Normally, children get infected by their second birthday. Now you are going to have kids that are three, four years of age who have never seen the movie.

Older children and adults who have been previously exposed to infections could be at risk of waning immunity. In the absence of a virus, levels of antibody decline. John Tregoning, an immunelogist at Imperial College London, says that people can get exposed to a small amount of virus in a typical year. But “that kind of asymptomatic boosting maybe hasn’t happened in the last few years”.

There is also a lot that researchers still don’t understand about seasonal viruses. The restrictions on COVID-19 did not seem to have an impact on one type of rhinoviruses, which are the most common cause of colds. That might be because of their hardiness, Miller says. They’re less prone to desiccation and can persist for longer in the environment.

Theviruses compete and interfere with one another. It may be possible to prevent infections with anotherviruses if you have a strong innate immune response to one virus. The decline in the first wave of flu was caused by the Omicron surge. Perhaps Omicron infection provided some short-lived protection against flu. The Omicron surge might have convinced people to keep their distance.

On the Rise of Covid-19 and Other Infectious Diseases During the Last Unusual Winter in South Africa, says Ms. Pitzer

Pitzer expects the peaks and valleys to look more similar to those that occurred before the vaccine became a reality. She isn’t placing any bets. But she says: “I do expect that this winter is probably going to be the last unusual winter.”

Covid-19 is not unique in this regard. The possibility of spread of other viruses, particularly respiratory syncytial virus, orRSV, andInfluenza, can be increased by Thanksgiving gatherings, which are already high for this time of year.

Shishi Luo, an associate director at the genetic testing company Helix, said there was an increase in coronavirus positivity. It’s increasing fastest among 18 to 24 year olds.

A higher percentage of Covid-19 tests returning positive results can be an indication that transmission is on the rise.

Luo said more cases should be expected. I am unsure if they are measured in how we measure cases right now, but I think more people should be sick. I definitely am.”

Amid the chaos, the government has stopped reporting the bulk of the country’s Covid infections and narrowed its criteria of counting Covid deaths in a way that the World Health Organization warned would “very much underestimate the true death toll.”

Can Covid-19 Be Changed? The U.S. Case Study Reveals a Large Rise in the BQ Subvariants of Omicron

The BQ subvariants of Omicron have risen to dominate transmission in the US. The descendants of BA.5 are Bq.1 and Bq.1.1, which have five and six key genes that help them evade immunity from vaccines and infections. Because of these changes, they’re growing more quickly than BA.5 did.

If there’s reason to worry about BQ in the US, it could be this: Americans aren’t as well-vaccinated or boosted as other countries. CDC data shows that two-thirds of the population has completed the primary series of the Covid-19 vaccines, and only 11% of those who are eligible have gotten an updated bivalent booster. In the UK, 89% of the population over age 12 has completed their primary series, and 70% have been boosted.

The number of covid-19 cases has not changed for the past four weeks. But it’s not gone: On average, more than 300 Americans die and 3,400 people are hospitalized each day with Covid-19, according to CDC data.

Nobody knows exactly what will happen with the BQ variants. The original Omicron variant has a jaw-dropping peak of nearly a million new daily infections and many experts feel hopeful that it won’t happen again.

Bill Hanage believes that people’s behavior and their social contacts might be more indicative of how cases will change over time.

He thinks it’s likely that we’ll see a rise in cases that may peak around the second week in January – as it has in years past – but that it won’t have a big effect on hospitalizations and deaths.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/24/health/covid-19-thanksgiving-bq/index.html

What is the impact of Bq.1? The impact of dominant coronavirus variants on a country’s vaccination rates and demographics

Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at the W.H.T., says that the advantages of Bq.1 may be because they are not drastic.

“It’s probably got a bit more of a fitness advantage, so what we’re seeing is gradual replacement without a massive change in the total number of Covid-19 cases,” he said.

At a time when population immunity is high thanks to vaccines and infections, these subvariants will land. It’s a very different setting than the virus encountered when Omicron emerged a year ago, and that should also help dampen any coming wave, Pekosz says.

New research indicates that a country’s vaccination rate matters more than any other single factor when it comes to the effects of variants on a population.

Scientists at Los Alamos National Labs recently completed a study delving into what drove the effects of 13 dominant variants of coronavirus as they transitioned from one to another in 213 countries. The study contains data from the end of September and was published before the peer review.

The number of previous cases in a country, the percentage of those wearing masks, average income and the age of the population all ran second, third, fourth and fifth, respectively.

How many other variants are in the mix when a new one rises is also an important factor, says senior study author Bette Korber, a laboratory fellow in the Theoretical Biology and Biophysics Group at Los Alamos.

The Alpha variant out of California and New York was a very distinctive one that had a competitive edge over the England version, which may have slowed its roll here.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/24/health/covid-19-thanksgiving-bq/index.html

The XBB and the Rise of China: A CNN Special Report on the Last of Zhou’s Auto Dealer (Chenglia)

Korber is not making any predictions. She says it’s just too difficult to know what’s going to happen, pointing to Asia as the source of her uncertainty.

The US hasn’t had much of a presence in Asia, which is where the waves driven by the XBB come from. She said the Bq variant looked impressive against XBB, which is highly immune-evasive.

She said that she thought it was a good time to wear masks. Masks protect the wearer as well as others around them. “And get the booster if you’re eligible and it’s the right moment for you,” especially as we gather around the table to feast with our friends and family.

“It’s a time to exercise a little additional caution to prevent that wave that we don’t want to see happening, or at least make it a smaller bump,” Korber said

CNN published a version of the story in their China newsletter, which offered an update on the country’s rise and how it affects the world. Sign up here.

Zhou, an auto dealer in northeastern China, last saw his father alive in a video chat on the afternoon of November 1, hours after their home on the far outskirts of Beijing was locked down.

Loss of a Dad, a Girl and a Father in a New City: The Beijing-based iPhone Assembly Factory Comes under Chaotic Covid Rules

At the time, they didn’t even realize the snap Covid restrictions had been imposed – there was no warning beforehand, and the apartment building where Zhou’s parents and his 10-year-old son lived did not have any cases, he said.

“The local government killed my dad,” Zhou told CNN in his Beijing home, breaking down in tears. He said he’s received no explanation about why the ambulance took so long to arrive, just a death certificate stating the wrong date of death.

On the same day Zhou lost his father, a 3-year-old boy died of gas poisoning in a locked-down compound in the northwestern city of Lanzhou, after he was blocked from being taken promptly to a hospital. Two weeks later, a 4-month-old girl died in hotel quarantine in the central city of Zhengzhou after a 12-hour delay in medical care.

Zhou said he contacted several state media outlets in Beijing to report on his story, but no reporters came. Despite knowing the risk of repercussions from the government, he turned to foreign media. CNN is only using his surname to mitigate that risk.

In the central city of Zhengzhou this week, workers at the world’s biggest iPhone assembly factory clashed with hazmat-suited security officers over a delay in bonus payment and chaotic Covid rules.

Zero-Covid: What Happens If You Don’t Live Here? The Chongqing Outburst of China’s Facebook Live

On Thursday, a man in the city of Chongqing gave a speech about the Covid locking up his residential compound. I would rather die without freedom. he shouted to a cheering crowd, who hailed him a “hero” and wrestled him from the grip of several police officers who had attempted to take him away.

These acts of defiance echoed an outpouring of discontent online, notably from Chinese football fans – many under some form of lockdown or restrictions – who have only been able to watch from home as tens of thousands of raucous fans pack stadiums at the World Cup in Qatar.

Fans are not told to wear face masks, or to submit proof of Covid test results. They are not living on the same planet as us. asked a Wechat article questioning China’s insistence on zero-Covid, which went viral before it was censored.

There are signs that the growing public discontent in China is causing a lot of stress to officials with heavy social and economic tolls.

Instead of relaxing controls, many local officials are reverting to the zero-tolerance playbook, attempting to stamp out infections as soon as they flare up.

The northern city of Shijiazhuang was among the first to cancel mass testing. It also allowed students to return to schools after a long period of online classes. Authorities imposed a lock down on Monday after cases increased over the weekend.

On Tuesday, financial hub Shanghai banned anyone arriving in the city from entering venues including shopping malls, restaurants, supermarkets and gyms for five days. In the middle of the city, authorities shut down cultural and entertainment venues.

For the fifth time, officials locked down the most populous Baiyun district in Guangzhou after a protest took place there.

With so many people staying home, Beijing’s downtown streets were eerily quiet on Tuesday. Small lines formed outside of clinics and at drugstores because cold and flu medication is harder to find.

The two vaccination centers in Beijing set up to give shots to the elderly were empty Tuesday. Despite fears of a major outbreak, there was little evidence of a surge in patient numbers.

Huang said he does not expect any fundamental changes to the zero-Covid policy in the short term. “Because the local governments’ incentive structure has not been changed. They are still held accountable for the Covid situation in their jurisdiction,” he said.

For their part, Chinese officials have repeatedly denied that the 20 measures listed in the government guidelines were meant for a pivot to living with the virus.

Zhou, who is on the outskirts of Beijing, said the zero- Covid policy was too restrictive and beneficial to the majority.

He didn’t want things like this to happen again in China or anywhere in the world. “I lost my father. My son lost his grandpa. I am furious now.

Zero-Covid Relaxation Reaction in Beijing During the First Year of the Second World Trade Show: Is It Going Back to Normal?

The signs of the zero-covid controls have been dismantled, health code signs have been removed from metro station walls, and some checkpoint have been closed because of the new policy of the government.

The changes were met with relief by many and sparked discussion of freer travel within the country, but there was also a sense of uncertainty about what will happen in the future.

One manager at a tech company in Beijing said that the world had changed in an instant. I think we are getting back to normal life. If I don’t get back to normal life, I might lose my mind.

“How can it change so fast?” “Ding, what are you talking about?” It makes me feel like we are fools. It’s all up to them. I feel that it is good, because they said it was good. I have no choice as it is so unbelievable. All I can do is follow the arrangement.

The changes were welcomed, but they had also brought about a feeling of disbelief in the city, which experienced a chaotic, more than two-month-long, citywide lock down earlier this year.

He said that he was happy with the changes but that a lot of his friends were showing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/08/china/china-zero-covid-relaxation-reaction-intl-hnk/index.html

What to do if you get sick, or how to get rid of zero-Covid-19? Beijing’s response to the December 7 announcement

Top health officials in Beijing on Wednesday said the changes to the rules were based on scientific evidence, including the spread of the comparatively milder Omicron variant, the vaccination rate, and China’s level of experience in responding to the virus.

Then, on December 7, the central government announced a drastic overhaul of approach, rolling back lockdowns, testing and allowing residents to isolate at home – effectively abandoning zero-Covid.

The government and state media had long emphasized the dangers of the virus and its potential long-term effects – and used this to justify the maintenance of restrictive policies.

State media have already begun trying to change everyone’s thinking by downplaying the lethality of the Omicron variant. At the same time, a huge drive to vaccinate the elderly is underway.

On China’s heavily moderated social media platform Weibo, topics and hashtags related to what to do if infected by Omicron trended high on Thursday morning, while there were numerous reports of panic buying of fever medications.

They were not told what kind of medication they needed to use and what to do if they got sick. In fact, we should have started doing this a long, long time ago,” said Sam Wang, 26, a lawyer in Beijing, who added that the policy release felt “sudden and arbitrary.”

People are worried about living with the virus. If I get re-infections, I don’t know what the harm will do to my body, but I want to keep myself safe.

Fears about the impact of Covid-19 within China may also play out along generational and geographic lines, as younger people and those in more cosmopolitan urban centers may be more likely to support reopening the country and relaxing rules, residents said.

What have we learned from Wang’s Covid-19 results in Beijing? Changing the rules, changing the lockdowns: the impact on the city’s health and socio-economic survival

Wang’s mother was buying high quality N95 masks and preparing for a nuclear winter, until a potential wave of cases passed.

Already there has been some contradiction in how the guidelines are implemented as local authorities adjust – and many are watching to see the impact in their cities.

In Beijing, authorities on Wednesday said a health code showing a negative Covid-19 test would still be required for dining in at restaurants or entering some entertainment venues – in conflict with the national guidelines.

Hao, in Beijing, said on Wednesday evening that her health code had turned yellow – which would usually bar her from entering most public places, until she queued up for another test that returned a negative result. She decided to stay at her home to be safe, because she knew she could mostly go out freely with the new rules.

The latest national guidelines state that mass testing across entire cities is no longer required. They also take a more measured approach to lockdowns: instead of shutting down cities, the government says movement restrictions should apply to high-risk communities, buildings and households. People no longer have to show evidence of a negative test to travel between regions or access public transport and other venues, except for high-risk settings such as nursing homes. Low rates of vaccination among older people are prioritized by the guidelines.

But researchers say some aspects of the new rules are ambiguous and open to interpretation by local governments, including when and where to test people during an outbreak, what defines high-risk areas and how to manage them.

Experts have warned that as people in big cities return to their hometowns for the Lunar New Year next month, the virus could sweep through China’s vast rural areas, where vaccination rates are lower and medical resources are severely lacking.

Close to one million deaths may be the result of China’s abrupt and under prepared reopening.

China doesn’t have a strong system for primary medical care system, such as a network of general practitioners, so people go to hospital for mild conditions, says Xi Chen, who hopes more details on how the government plans to triage care will emerge in the coming days.

JoyZhang is a sociologist at the University of Kent in the UK and she believes that the more relaxed restrictions won’t help businesses recover from long lockdowns or remove social stigma. “I’m afraid that the health and socio-economic risk will be passed on to individuals.”

There needs to be urgent guidance regarding how to curb transmission in a surge, such as mask mandates or work-from- home policies. It’s not clear how officials will track whether a city has passed the peak of the disease, given the reduction in testing.

The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funded the study, which showed that with fourth-dose vaccine coverage of 85%, the death toll can be reduced by 26% to 35%.

Towards a Comprehensive Control of Covid-19 in China: Results from the Day of the Deactivation of Mobile Item Card Health Tracking

Changes continued Monday as authorities announced a deactivation of the “mobile itinerary card” health tracking function planned for the following day.

The system, which is separate from the health code scanning system still required in a reduced number of places in China, uses cell phone data to identify people who have been to a city with a high level of crime.

But as the scrapping of parts of the zero-Covid infrastructure come apace, there are questions about how the country’s health system will handle a mass outbreak.

Media outlet China Youth Daily documented hours-long lines at a clinic in central Beijing on Friday, and cited unnamed experts calling for residents not to visit hospitals unless necessary.

Health workers in the capital were also grappling with a surge in emergency calls, including from many Covid-positive residents with mild or no symptoms, with a hospital official on Saturday appealing to residents in such cases not to call the city’s 911-like emergency services line and tie up resources needed by the seriously ill.

The daily volume of emergency calls had surged from its usual 5,000 to more than 30,000 in recent days, Chen Zhi, chief physician of the Beijing Emergency Center said, according to official media.

Covid was “spreading rapidly” driven by highly transmissible Omicron variants in China, a top Covid-19 expert, Zhong Nanshan, said in an interview published by state media Saturday.

It will be difficult to completely cut off the transmission chain, no matter how strong the prevention and control is, according to a key public voice.

The surprise move to lift its measures in the wake of protests may make it difficult for China to cope with the expected surge of cases.

Measures to be undertaken include increasing ICU wards and beds, enhancing medical staff for intensive care and setting up more clinics for fevers, China’s National Health Commission said in a statement.

Experts say that the country is not adequately prepared for a drastic exit because it has fallen short on things such as bolstering the elderly vaccine rate and increasing surge and intensive care capacity.

The Beijing You An Hospital (PHENIX) protests against strict zero-Covid policies after the Urumqi apartment fire killed 14 people

On Friday, China’s market watchdog said there was a shortage of some “hot-selling” drugs, and promised to cracked down on price gouging, while major online store jdi.com last week said it was taking measures to make sure there was stable supplies after sales for certain medications

A hashtag trending on China’s heavily moderated social media platform Weibo over the weekend featured a state media interview with a Beijing doctor saying people who tested positive for Covid-19 but had no or mild symptoms did not need to take medication to recover.

People that have no symptoms do not need medication. It is not necessary to travel, rest or have a bad mood. The Beijing You An Hospital’s chief infectious disease physician told an interviewer that his interview had been viewed more than 400 million times.

BEIJING (AP) — China will drop a travel tracing requirement as part of an uncertain exit from its strict “zero-COVID” policies that have elicited widespread dissatisfaction.

The level of public dissent not seen for decades in Beijing, as well as other cities, is the result of last month’s protests against the restrictions. Some people were arrested at the protests or in the days after the party responded with a huge show of force.

Concerns about a new wave of potentially overwhelming infections in some areas has arisen as a result of the relaxation.

At the same time, the government reversed course by allowing those with mild symptoms to recuperate at home rather than being sent to field hospitals that have become notorious for overcrowding and poor hygiene.

Reports on the Chinese internet, which is tightly controlled by the government, sought to reassure a nervous public, stating that restrictions would continue to be dropped and travel, indoor dining and other economic activity would soon be returning to pre-pandemic conditions.

China decided at the beginning of December to scrap its strict zero- Covid policy, which had been in place for three years.

The apartment fire in the western city Urumqi that killed 14 people in late November started public anger that had been simmering for months. Many believed lockdown measures had hampered rescue efforts, despite official denials.

What’s Going on in Guangzhou after the Xi-Mao announcement: Lars Hamer’s opinion on China’s economy

Xi’s government promised to reduce the cost and disruption after the economy shrank by 2.6% from the previous quarter in the three months ending in June. Forecasters say the economy probably is shrinking in the current quarter. Imports tumbled 10.9% from a year ago in November in a sign of weak demand.

Amid the unpredictable messaging from Beijing, experts warn there still is a chance the ruling party might reverse course and reimpose restrictions if a large-scale outbreak ensues.

Last week’s announcement allowed considerable room for local governments to assign their own regulations. Most restaurants in Beijing, for example, still require a negative test result obtained over the previous 48 hours and rules are even stricter for government offices.

The China lifestyle magazine, That’s, is edited by the Editor-in- Chief, Lars Hamer. He has been living in Guangzhou for over a year. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Follow him on Twitter @LarsHamer1. Read more opinion on CNN.

A Day in the Life of a Close Contact: The Quarantine Facility in Guangzhou, China, Just Before the Emergency Emergency Service Ends

Every resident in this area dreads the knock. There was a loud bang at my door in the early morning of Tuesday, January 16th. Instantly, fear washed over me; health care workers in hazmat suits were ordering everyone to go downstairs because a neighbor had tested positive for Covid-19.

I had good reason to worry. A teacher friend of mine and his colleagues were sent to centralized quark after a student tested positive for Covid-19 at his school. I was worried that it would happen to me.

To my surprise, nothing of the sort. I took a Covid-19 test and underwhelmingly, that was it. Before my result even came out, I was free to leave my house and go about my day, totally unrestricted.

If this had occurred just weeks before, I would have, like my friend, been labeled a “close contact” and therefore would have been powerless to avoid the quarantine facility’s vice-like grip.

Over the next few days, the Guangzhou I came to in 2018 was almost back to normal. The streets were lined with people. Friends and families who had not seen each other for months gathered in bars and restaurants, and QR codes were being ripped down from walls; our movements no longer tracked.

Just look at the new measure forbidding the blocking of fire exits in the event of a lockdown, for example. Now, people who are infected can isolate themselves at home. Quarantine facilities are coming to an end.

Friends and families who had not seen each other for months gathered in bars and restaurants, and QR codes were being ripped down from walls; our movements no longer tracked.

I spent most days working until late at night because it was the only thing to do; non-essential businesses had closed, and millions of people were confined to their homes. I too started to feel the strain and was starting to consider leaving the country.

The moment was pure disbelief. The number of cases that day in Guangzhou resembled the number that triggered a city-wide scare in Shanghai in April.

The Cosmic Microvirus Disease (COVID-19) Outbreaks in the Southern Hemisphere after a Three-Year Extension of the State of China

The Chinese universities will allow students to finish the semester from their homes in order to reduce the potential for a bigger case of COVID-19 in the New Year travel rush.

The number of schools involved was not clear, but universities in the area said students would have the option to stay on campus or return home early. The Lunar New Year, which falls on Jan. 22 this year, is traditionally China’s busiest travel season.

Over the past three years universities have been the scene of frequent lock downs, sometimes leading to altercations between authorities and students locked in their dorm rooms.

Last week’s announcement by the government that it would be ending many of the strictest measures follows three years in which it imposed some of the toughest viruses restrictions in the world.

The government of the semi-autonomous southern city took a further step Tuesday, saying it would remove restrictions for arriving travelers that currently prevent them from dining in restaurants or going to bars for the first three days. It would also scrap the use of its contact-tracing app, although vaccine requirements to enter venues like restaurants will remain in place. The measures take effect Wednesday.

Despite the surge in cases, China has suspended most public testing booths, meaning there is no accurate public measure of the scale of infections across the country.

China’s government-supplied figures have not been independently verified and questions have been raised about whether the ruling Communist Party has sought to minimize numbers of cases and deaths.

COVID Observations of the Central and Northeastern U.S. Consultations in the People’s Republic of China (PRC)

The State Department said that in response to an increase in carbon dioxide cases in China, the U.S. consulates in the northeast and central areas have been offering only emergency services.

The e-mailed message said that Mission China tries to give full consular services to U.S. citizens living in the PRC, but more disruptions are possible.

The Chinese CDC will release relevant COVID information for reference and research from now on after the National Health Commission stopped publishing the data daily. The NHC did not say why the change had been made and did not indicate how often the CDC would release data.

Widespread shortages of cold and fever medicines were caused by the sudden lifting of restrictions. Long lines have become routine outside fever clinics and hospital wards overflowing with patients in the capital Beijing and elsewhere in the country.

People wait for test results at a clinic in Beijing. Nurses in full-body white protective gear checked in patients one by one.

A few kilometers (miles) south, at Chaoyang Hospital, about a dozen people waited in a line of blue tents, deflecting winds amid subzero temperatures. One person in the queue took out a bottle of disinfectant and sprayed it around her as she waited.

Across the street at Gaoji Baikang Pharmacy, around a dozen people waited in line for cough medication and Chinese herbal remedies. “Don’t panic and hoarding, we are doing all we can to stock up to fulfill your needs” was the sign at the front. A man coming out said that he would not let others buy more than two packages of Lianhua Qingwen and that every customer would only be allowed to buy one package.

The shortage of motorized tricycle delivery drivers in China caused hospitals and distribution points to be overwhelmed and caused packages to pile up.

China’s Public Health System is Surprisingly Facing the Next Wave of Infections: The Loss of Hospitalization in an Expanding Reopened Country

The University of Hong Kong believes that a reopened country could lead to as many as 668 deaths per million people.

The surge of infections would “likely overload many local health systems across the country,” said the research paper, released last week on the Medrxiv preprint server and which has yet to undergo peer review.

Simultaneously lifting restrictions in all provinces would lead to hospitalization demands 1.5 to 2.5 times of surge hospital capacity, according to the study.

They were the first officially reported deaths since the dramatic easing of restrictions on December 7, although Chinese social media posts have pointed to a surge in demand at Beijing’s funeral homes and crematoriums in recent weeks.

Customers at the funeral home on the outskirts of Beijing would need to wait until the next day for cremation according to an employee who spoke to CNN.

A surge of infections is being faced by major cities. In the financial hub of Shanghai, schools have moved most classes online starting from Monday. Students that are taking online classes, and pre-schoolers not to prepare for a return to school are being told in the southern metropolis of Guangzhou.

In the megacity of Chongqing in the southwest, authorities announced on Sunday that public sector workers testing positive for Covid can go to work “as normal” – a remarkable turnaround for a city that only weeks ago had been in the throes of a mass lockdown.

“The results showed that Guangzhou already passed the recent wave, while Beijing, Shanghai, and Chongqing urban areas are in the midst of the current wave that would likely pass by the end of 2022,” the study said.

Every year hundreds of millions of people who have left their hometowns to build a life in China’s fast growing cities pour into trains, buses and planes to see their family.

The study stated that the next wave of infections would be passed through China’s major cities by the end of 2022, whereas rural areas would be hit by a surge in January.

“It is never too late to flatten the curve,” says Xi Chen, an economist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, who studies China’s public-health system.

The two studies broadly agree on mortality estimates and the impact of interventions, says Cameron. “This similarity in large part reflects an agreement that herd immunity will only be achieved after a large, and difficult to contain, spread of transmission throughout the entire country.”

If Liang was shifting focus, another prominent public health expert, such as Dr. Zhong Nanshan, made false statements about the virus. He went from talking about China’s mass infections strategy to telling the state media that he hasn’t seen any cases of long-term organ damage.

Zhong also said that 78% of patients infected with the Omnicron variant won’t be reinfected for quite a long time. Studies suggest protection against reinfection declines dramatically over time and most people will be reinfected every one to two years.

Comments on China’s “Reverses its zero-covid-policy” post and debate about the “about-face” of the Containment Commission

The about-face did not go unnoticed on the Chinese internet. A post juxtaging several experts’ TV appearances before and after state policy change received more than 100,000 views.

The member of the containment commission famous for their insistence that no one would shut down is now getting online apologies.

Whiplash aside, much of the online discussion has moved to how to deal with the aftermath of the policy change, including what preventative measures and treatments are available.

Recent days have seen the emergence of untried remedies to fight COVID. A member of China’s prestigious Academy of Engineering recommended the method of rinsing out your mouth with iced salt water. Commenters were perplexed. Did the salt water rinse not be discredited two years ago? Does the iced version make a difference? One wrote a post on the internet.

A local government in southwest China suggested making tea out of orange peels and monk fruit – both common ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine – to prevent infection. Dr. Zhong said weeks ago that he hasn’t found any medication that is effective at preventing a COVID infection.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/20/1143413739/confusion-and-falsehoods-spread-as-china-reverses-its-zero-covid-policy

The Rise of COVID in the 21st Century: How the Chinese Diaspora Gets Their Public Health Communications Out to the Most Vulnerable

The chaos and uncertainty reminds Chen of the atmosphere in the early 2020s, when COVID was first spreading. “It’s kind of flying in the dark.”

Additionally, non-state media outlets are vulnerable to government crackdowns. The online health information outlet that opposed the government’s promotion of traditional Chinese medicine, as well as the zero-COVID policy, was suspended from popular social media platforms in August. Its accounts on the popular Chinese social media site, Weibo, remain silent today.

A recent example was how the Communist Party-controlled newspaper, The Global Times, cited a misleading report in the British tabloid, Daily Mail, that suggested without evidence that vaccine maker Moderna manufactured the virus. The Global Times extensively cited the coverage, using it to attack other unsupported theories about the virus’s origin, including the one that suggested it leaked from a government research lab in Wuhan. Other smaller social media accounts made videos of the report, putting “British Media” in the headlines.

The Chinese diaspora has a very useful role to play in this, because it shows that the experience of being in China isn’t very serious.

She points out that while researchers and journalists often pay attention to social media discourse, many rural, often elderly residents rely on television and family members in larger cities to stay informed. Many people are vulnerable to the disease due to the scarcity of healthcare resources, and don’t find information about it on social media.

With the disease rapidly cascading from large cities to towns and villages, the Chinese government needs to act fast to get medically-sound public health messages out to the most vulnerable people, says Chen.

Public health authorities don’t base their messages on science but are more pragmatic and culturally-based.

Chen says that scientists have some soul searching to do in the next couple of years. “If we know that politics is going to play a role in public health and also in science, how do we conduct ourselves? What do you think of our ethics?

“I really don’t think the village doctors, or even the township or county hospital, can handle the increased number of severe cases,” says Huan Wang, a researcher at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions. “I think the rural villagers are just left on their own in a dark COVID winter.”

As the Lunar New Year approaches, health officials are concerned the celebrations could turn into superspreader events, catching rural systems off guard and driving up infections in a country where natural immunity is nearly non-existent and vaccine hesitancy has remained stubbornly high among the older population.

A model released last week by researchers at University of Hong Kong predicted that up to 1 million deaths could happen in China if it doesn’t maintain social distancing policies.

“As the experts say, just set off some fireworks, have a good party and scare away the virus,” says Sun Caiyun, an ebullient restaurant owner in Beijing who says she is intent on heading back to her home village in the northern Shandong province – COVID or not. “Of course I am planning on returning home, because Beijing bans firecrackers!”

“People from the cities have been coming over and buying all of our medicines, or they’ll order online and have our pharmacies mail it over to them,” says Li Qian, a recent college graduate, who lives in a village in China’s southern Jiangsu province. She worries most about her asthmatic grandparents; the nearest hospital, she says, is two hours away.

The focus on containing the case for nearly three years has left China unprepared for the treatment of the infections. “Other measures, especially vaccination of the elderly [and] stockpiling of antivirals, were all relegated to a back-burner issue,” says Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow following public health at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Public health officials in China have no accurate idea of how far the epidemic has spread because there is no data.

“The number they [are] willing to show the number of deaths is almost bordering on ridiculous,” says Ray Yip, an epidemiologist who founded the Center for Disease Control’s office in China in 2003.

Hospitals that NPR visited in Beijing this week were busy but orderly, with a handful elderly patients in the lobby lying in gurneys hooked up to intravenous bags because beds had run out.

So far, the health care system has held up in large cities – in part because many migrant workers have only rural health insurance that cannot be used in urban hospitals.

“You just have to suck it for a few days,” says Zhang Xiaohu, a delivery worker who contracted COVID in early December. He says he worked through his symptoms, because he does not receive paid sick leave and could not afford to go to a Beijing hospital. “If you are a delivery guy, you need to be the kind of person who dares to risk their lives.”

The man waiting in line said his grandpa was the one who got positive for COVID, but they had to look for a hospital that could take him.

Cases have increased since China abandoned zero-covid. When CNN visited a Beijing crematorium last week, cars lined up to enter, filled with grieving family members who had been waiting more than a day to cremate loved ones who died of Covid.

The numbers look plausible, but there is no other data to compare them with. If the estimated infection numbers mentioned here are accurate, it means the nationwide peak will occur within the next week,” Ben Cowling, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Hong Kong told CNN in an emailed statement, when asked about the purported NHC estimates.

On Friday, a copy of what was purportedly the NHC meeting notes was circulated on Chinese social media and seen by CNN; the authenticity of the document has not been verified and the NHC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Financial Times said it was Sun Yang – a deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention – who presented the figures to officials during the closed-door briefing, citing two people familiar with the matter.

The Beijing medical system: the results of a closed-door NHC meeting are “very sad” for Covid patients, as reported by a top infectious disease doctor

The public data of the NHC showed only 62,592 Covid cases in the first twenty days of December.

According to the latest NHC guidelines, only deaths caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure after contracting the virus are classified as Covid deaths, Wang Guiqiang, a top infectious disease doctor, told a news conference Tuesday.

The minutes of the Wednesday closed-door NHC meeting made no reference to discussions concerning how many people may have died in China, according to both reports and the document CNN viewed.

Paxlovid remains the only foreign medicine to treat Covid that has been approved by China’s regulator for nationwide use, but access is extremely difficult to come by. When a Chinese healthcare platform offered the antiviral drug earlier this month, it sold out within hours.

The China News Service said on Monday that community doctors would give instructions to patients on how to use medicine after receiving training.

“We have received the notice from officials, but it is not clear when the drugs will arrive,” it cited a worker at a local community health center in Beijing’s Xicheng district as saying.

Four doctors in Beijing did not have enough time to eat or drink, according to an emergency room doctor in Beijing. He said that they have been seeing lots of patients.

Another emergency room doctor told the newspaper he had been working despite having developed fever symptoms. The doctor said that there was high pressure because of the high number of patients.

Hundreds of health professionals from across China have traveled to the city to help with the strain on the Beijing medical system.

The country’s partial reopening has been met with joy by citizens who have been stuck inside for three years, as well as relief by those who have been separated from their loved ones.

The border remains largely closed to foreigners, apart from a limited number of business or family visits — though the government signaled Monday this could loosen, too.

“Everyone can (live) their normal life,” said May Ma, a Chinese border quarantine traveler in South Korea during the pandemic

“Finally, everybody can (live) their normal life,” said one Chinese national living in New York, who hasn’t been home for four years. She called the separation “very painful,” saying several of her family members and the beloved pet dog she grew up with had died during that time.

Her family “missed (my graduation). She said that they missed many things. “And I also missed so many things for my family. All of my friends got married during the epidemic. Some of them had babies. I feel like I missed everything, I missed the most important points in their lives.”

While in South Korea, May Ma has been unable to go home for three years. The worst thing about the quarantine requirements had been worrying about her grandparents’ health, and not knowing if she’d be able to return in time to say goodbye if anything were to happen, she said.

Throughout the pandemic, “the scariest thing was … not knowing where the end is, not knowing when I can go back,” she said. I can finally see the end for myself, I feel very happy.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/china-border-quarantine-travel-reax-intl-hnk/index.html

Online travel search volume in China during the Lunar New Year holiday season grew to threefold within three months of Trip.com’s announcement

Those within China are also celebrating and anticipating outbound travel. Most people have not left the country for a long time and are now booking their vacations online.

Online searches for outbound flights and overseas hotels jumped to a three-year peak on Trip.com, a Chinese travel booking website, according to company data. Searches for popular destinations increased tenfold within half an hour of the announcement, with many people searching for outbound group tours during the Lunar New Year holiday season in late January, data shows.

Macao, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, the United States and the United Kingdom were among the website’s top 10 destinations with the fastest growth in search volume since the announcement.

“I feel like right now, it’s totally a mess,” said the Chinese national in New York. “Everybody is sick. It is not the best time for me to visit my family. Maybe two or three months later.

Some overseas destinations are also on guard. The Malpensa airport in Milan has been asked by Lombardy officials to conduct tests for all arrivals from China until the end of January.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/china-border-quarantine-travel-reax-intl-hnk/index.html

China’s decision to end quarantine for H1N1 virus and its impact on the global health system: Economic recovery after the first shock, an architect in Beijing

“It doesn’t matter if I can get back in time for Spring Festival,” said Ma in South Korea, referring to Lunar New Year. “There is hope after all, I can bear waiting for a little while longer.”

Companies in Beijing welcomed China’s decision to end quarantines for travelers from other countries as an important step to revive slumping business activity while Japan implemented measures to control infections from people in their country.

The ruling Communist Party’s abrupt decision to lift some of the world’s strictest anti-virus controls comes as it tries reverse an economic downturn. It ended curbs that restricted millions of people’s freedom, but hospitals have been flooded with patients with the flu.

The British Chamber of Commerce hoped that China would restart its normal processing of business visas in order to allow for more people to come and go. It said that will “contribute to restoring optimism and reinstating China as a priority investment destination.”

All visitors from China will be tested for the H1N1 virus as an emergency measure, according to Japan.

Wang said that the Chinese government has always followed science-based and targeted measures. He said a “science-based response and coordinated approach” would be needed to promote a steady recovery of the world economy.

Starting last month, however, the ruling party has gradually joined the United States and other governments that are trying to live with the virus by treating infections instead of imposing blanket quarantines on cities or neighborhoods.

The ruling party said that it was trying to decrease disruptions after economic activity fell. There were more changes made after the protest inShanghai and others.

The government “should have done the job in a more meticulous way,” said Lu Haoming, a Beijing architect. “Although the death rate of this disease is not as serious as at the beginning, the first shock has still been quite severe.”

On Monday, the National Health Commission downgraded COVID-19 from a Class A infectious disease to a Class B disease and removed it from the list of illnesses that require quarantine. It said authorities would stop tracking down close contacts and designating areas as being at high or low risk of infection.

The Olympic fever of the second decade of China: the era of the Omicron outbreak and the national dialogue on social, political, and economic issues

It was supposed to be a glorious year for China and the leader of the country, as he started his second decade in power with an aim to restore the nation to greatness.

In the tightly sealed, meticulously managed Olympic bubble there were countless face masks, endless spraying of disinfectant and rigorous daily testing paid-off. The Winter Olympics were unaffected by the Omicron variant as any visitors who carried it were immediately identified and their cases contained.

As he prepared for a third term in power, the success added to the party’s narrative that its political system is superior to those of Western democracies in dealing with the epidemic.

Having tied himself so closely to zero-Covid, Xi was stuck in a trap of his own making. He couldn’t afford to move away from it, the potential surge of infections and deaths posing too great a risk to his authority before he secured his norm-shattering third term at the congress.

And so instead of vaccinating the elderly and bolstering ICU capacity, authorities wasted the next crucial months building larger quarantine facilities, rolling out more frequent mass testing, and imposing wider lockdowns that at one point affected more than 300 million people.

There were protests on a huge scale across the country. On university campuses and the streets of major cities, crowds gathered to call for an end to incessant Covid tests and lockdowns, with some decrying censorship and demanding greater political freedoms.

The nationwide demonstrations posed an unprecedented challenge to Xi. By then the country had a daily record of over 40,000 Omicron infections, and the economic strain was so bad that governments ran out of cash to pay their bills.

The suddenness of the easing of restrictions has caught the public unawares and left them to scramble for their own.

Over-the-counter cold and fever medicines – which had been restricted from purchase under zero-Covid – sold out instantly at pharmacies and on online shopping sites. Huge lines have formed outside fever clinics and hospital emergency rooms overflow with patients, many elderly. Crematoriums are not able to handle all the bodies.

The credibility of the government is at stake, because of the true scale of the outbreak and deaths.

Covid-19 epidemic in China could be accelerated by the Lunar New Year holiday travels, as predicted by Shanghai University and Health Institutions

The spread could be “dramatically enhanced” by travels expected during the upcoming Spring Festival, a national holiday period surrounding the Lunar New Year, which falls on January 22, the study said.

Researchers from universities and health institutions in Shanghai modeled the curves of daily new Covid-19 cases and accumulated total cases from the beginning of October to November 29, before the country began easing its nucleic testing requirements.

It is reasonable to assume that the Omicron outbreak in Chinese mainland could occur in waves and possibly a new surge in the late 19th century.

The study recommended emergency measures should be directed at delivering over-the-counter medicine to symptomatic patients who are low-risk, vaccinated, and under 60 years. It was recommended to quickly treat populations that are at high risk of getting sick, such as those who are 60 years old or older.