An Insight into China’s Covid Crisis

In the past two years, the Covid pandemic has had a detrimental impact on the lives and safety of millions of people. It has taken the lives of 6,213,876 people. The fight to prevent the rapid spread of Covid-19 has been an uphill battle. Despite the widespread vaccination efforts, implementation of extensive public health measures, and development of new drugs to treat the disease, Covid-19 continues to surge in many countries. As of right now, the most notable uptick has been in China where the new surge threatens the lives of over a billion people. 

 The first case of Covid emerged in Wuhan, China in December 2019, and since then has spread across the globe. In 2020, China was performing extremely well in terms of handling the outbreak. Their measures included rapid virus sequencing, contact tracing, isolation of Wuhan and Hubei provinces, shutting down schools and non-essential businesses, and construction of new hospitals to accommodate the increasing number of people who were severely ill, and needed hospitalization. China’s course of action was proving to be successful, as their Covid cases were significantly decreasing, while it was skyrocketing almost everywhere else. China has long followed a strict “zero Covid” strategy that attempts to contain the virus from spreading despite the number of cases. The smallest number of cases has led to rigid lockdowns. This policy to tackle the virus has demonstrated China’s impending goal of minimizing the number of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. To China’s credit, this approach has evidently worked. Since the pandemic has begun, China has only reported 4,600 deaths related to Covid while the United States has witnessed the deaths of almost one million people, and the United Kingdom has experienced the deaths of approximately 164,272 people. However, its policy has gathered tremendous backlash as well. The majority of China’s population is now vaccinated against the disease, yet the government remains reluctant to lift the restrictions, which in turn has a detrimental effect on their economy. 

What started out as a stringent public health measure to ensure containment of the virus has now evolved into a highly political issue. The current surge in China is caused by the highly transmissible Omicron variant. As a result of the new surge, 45 cities have witnessed some degree of a lockdown, one of them being Shanghai, China’s financial center. As of April 24, Shanghai reported more than 19,000 cases and 51 deaths. However, the lockdowns and quarantine measures imposed open Shanghai’s 28 million citizens mean that life in the city has come to a screeching halt, leading to questions about the sustainability of the “zero Covid” policy. The ongoing situation in Shanghai is dire as people continue to report food shortages and tremendous increases in food prices. Residents are being pulled out of their own homes to use the spaces as a quarantine center. There is a lack of medical supplies, children and parents are being ripped apart, and family members are forbidden from visiting their loved ones in the hospital. Time Magazine has also reported that the government is installing alarms at houses of patients who test positive for the virus.

The lockdowns have also been detrimental to China’s domestic economy, and the international economy. China’s lockdowns have threatened mass supply chains as the Port of Shanghai, the busiest port in the world is “suffering from major holdups” which has worsened congestion and led to a build-up of the number of ships that are waiting to be discharged. Unemployment levels have increased and retail sales have decreased by 3.5 percent since June 2020. Manufacturers for Tesla, and Apple have also halted their operations for the time being. Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei, has warned that “technology, industrial and automobile supply chains ‘will come to a complete halt if the city did not resume production by next month.” This has struck a sense of urgency among manufacturers, small businesses, and large corporations not only in China but around the world. Further delay in manufacturing and shipping can lead to large-scale supply chain disruption in the global economy, but there is no prospective end to China’s “zero Covid” measures. 

Donald Low, professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, claims that it’s become clearer that the costs of maintaining dynamic zero-Covid — not just the enormous costs to businesses and people’s livelihoods, but also the excess deaths caused by non-Covid conditions and the constant mental anguish and anxiety — exceed the benefits of the policy.” The current policy has shown to have spillover effects that have led to additional deaths. A nurse in Shanghai was turned away from her own hospital when was experiencing an asthma attack and she later passed away. Similarly, one of China’s most prominent economists’ 98-year-old mother passed away awaiting a kidney disease treatment because the result of her Covid test was waiting to be processed. The negative externalities of the policy have outweighed its advantages. The current policy poses a threat to people’s health, relationships, homes, freedom, and privacy. It is also not sufficient to accommodate China’s economy, which is the second-biggest economy in the world. However, Chinese President Xi Jinping has said that “prevention and control work cannot be relaxed.” As of now, it seems like the restrictions are staying in place.

Contrary to what the president claims, the “zero Covid” policy and China’s authoritarian hold over the pandemic are no longer viable and should be amended accordingly to meet the needs of current Chinese social, and economic standards. China must relax the restrictions, and follow alternative models other successful countries have used to keep their Covid surges in check or continue to experience the vast distrust, and disappointment of Chinese citizens towards the highly centralized government.

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