Abandoning the zero-covid policy has “put China’s elderly population in the firing line”—with potentially tragic consequences, argue Eyck Freymann and Yanzhong Huang, two health experts, in a guest essay
since Chinese authorities suppressed the anti-lockdown protests that began on November 25th, the “zero-covid” policy has been turned on its head. Under the pretext of following the democratic will, Chinese authorities have lurched from excessive caution to a hands-off approach.
The Chinese government clearly wanted a new equilibrium that delivered both zero covid and economic normality. The problem was that it never figured out how to achieve this. Local officials struggled to reconcile the two contradictory directives. Over the course of November, daily cases skyrocketed. One by one, the Chinese government is lifting its remaining pandemic restrictions. Mild cases are now allowed to isolate at home. Testing rates have plummeted so fast that it is impossible to tell where the major outbreaks are. Citizens no longer need to showcodes proving a recent negative test to travel or enter public venues, and the government on December 12th announced it will deactivate a phone app that has tracked people’s movements during the pandemic.
In just the past two weeks, central government authorities have finally started to talk about the importance of vaccinating those at high risk, especially in care homes. But in the past, it has taken China at least four months to deliver a round of vaccinations to its vast population. Unless the whole country locks down again–an unlikely prospect–only a fraction of those at high risk will be vaccinated before the tsunami of infections arrives.
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