‘They will have to take the plunge’: Delta variant underscores limitations of China’s Covid-zero strategy

As the highly contagious Delta variant spreads across the world, China is struggling to contain its latest domestic outbreak caused by the same variant. The number of Covid-19 cases reached a seven-month high on Tuesday, as the country reported 143 new cases.

Of the 143 new cases, 108 are domestically transmitted, including dozens of cases in Yangzhou City in the eastern province of Jiangsu, the epicentre of the latest domestic outbreak. Chinese state media characterised the current outbreak as the most serious since the pandemic first broke out in Wuhan last year.

The new outbreak began at the Nanjing airport in Jiangsu, where several airport cleaners were infected, and it soon spread to more than a dozen provinces across China. The spread has caused dozens of local authority workers to lose their jobs while state media tries to shore up confidence in the government’s ability to contain the latest outbreak.

“We have successfully contained the epidemic in Guangzhou, and the epidemic in Nanjing is gradually being put under control,” Chinese infectious disease expert Zhang Wenhong told the state-run Xinhua News Agency.

Some experts think China’s containment strategy has allowed the country to combat the pandemic successfully. While its daily case number on Tuesday reached a peak, it is still relatively low compared to other countries, which have reported tens of thousands of cases a day.

“I think the result of that is quite natural for China to adopt a very similar strategy from before, which has worked very effectively over the last 18 months,” said Chen Zhengming, an epidemiologist at the University of Oxford.

“Over the past year, all the measures have been tested to be successful despite being disruptive. It’s unlikely for China to change its virus-combat strategy over the next six to 12 months,” he added.

Since the outbreak emerged in Wuhan last year, China has relied on a heavy-handed approach to contain the spread of the virus, including imposing targeted lockdowns, curbing travelling and launching large-scale testing.

But some experts now suggest that China should abandon its “Covid-zero strategy” and find ways to exist with the virus. On 29 July, Zhang Wenhong suggested in a post on China’s popular social media site, Weibo, that since the pandemic won’t end anytime soon, most virologists think the world must learn to live with the virus.

A few days later, China’s former health minister Gao Qiang wrote an opinion piece in the state-run newspaper People’s Daily refuting Zhang’s suggestion and arguing that China needs robust measures to keep the virus out of the country.

Gao also criticised other countries for lifting restrictions too early. “Their sole reliance on vaccination and pursuit of the so-called ‘co-existence with the virus’ has led to a resurgence of the virus,” he wrote.

Some experts think China’s current strategy won’t be sustainable as the Delta variant becomes the dominant strain of virus worldwide. “With the Delta variant now in China, it’s ten times more difficult to fulfil the objective of their strategy, which is zero Covid-19 cases,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the US Council on Foreign Relations.

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“There is an increasing social and economic cost associated with the strategy,” he also told The Independent. “There is a shortage of labour and the disruption of the supply chain. It’s become a challenge for people to travel overseas, not to mention those who want to visit China.”

Huang pointed out that there are many political considerations behind Beijing’s insistence on maintaining the strategy too. “If they start to shift to a different approach, they need to do some political explanation about why they shift to a strategy that they have been criticising a lot,” he noted.

“Since Chinese people have been so used to the heavy-handed strategy, it takes time for them to learn that there is an alternative approach to combat the pandemic,” he added.

Apart from the political considerations, a number of international sports competitions that will be held in China next year are also viewed as factors that will convince Beijing to stick with its Covid-zero strategy.

“There are also a string of important events coming up, including the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and the 2022 Asia Games in China’s Hangzhou, which will bring tens of thousands of foreign athletes to China,” said Chen. “I don’t think Beijing is going to relax its strategy ahead of these events. Instead, there are signals that they might impose even stricter regulations to combat the pandemic.”

One example is the decision to fire dozens of local officials after outbreaks happened in their regions. “It sends a strong signal to the rest of the country,” Chen told The Independent. “The strategy has zero-tolerance, and if anything happens, local officials need to be responsible for it.”

The Delta variant has also renewed suspicion about the effectiveness of the Chinese vaccines, as some experts think Beijing’s decision to stick to the Covid-zero strategy reflects its lack of confidence in their jabs.

“With the Delta variant, it becomes clear that the efficacy of the Chinese vaccines is being questioned,” said Yanzhong Huang.

“Beijing recognises that the existing vaccine is not sufficient to help China achieve herd immunity, so they need to rely on the top-down campaign-based approach to sustain the extremely low level of infection in China,” he added.

A journalist with the People’s Daily was reprimanded by her bosses last week after she asked Nanjing health authorities how many of the recent infections were people who had already been vaccinated. The officials did not provide a breakdown, but within an hour of asking the question, the reporter was disciplined by her superiors, as the question might have been understood as casting doubts over China’s vaccines.

Some experts think China’s containment strategy will remain effective for the time being, while others think unless China is willing to close off its borders forever, it will have to follow the international trend and find a way to coexist with the virus. “Eventually, they will have to take the plunge,” said Siddharth Sridhar, a clinical virologist at Hong Kong University.

“I think China has to observe other countries’ examples very closely and decide what it wants to do. If the rest of the world decides to let Covid-19 loose, eventually it’s not a sustainable solution for China’s border to remain in its current state,” he added.