China is Adamant About Sticking to its Zero-Covid Policy

China is seen as an example of a country successfully managing the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The country has managed to maintain a low number of deaths and infections, going by official data. If you adjust for population size, there's been around three deaths per million people in mainland China, compared with about 3,000 in the US and 2,400 in the UK. 

Still, in the current wave, the country saw a rise in daily cases throughout March and into April, so that by April 21, they were at over 30,000 per day. But daily cases have dramatically fallen since then. 

In an about-turn, on May 10, the WHO said China should rethink its strict Covid strategy aimed at halting the spread of the virus. 

While many countries are now just relying on vaccination and improved treatments, China has stuck to a policy of lockdowns and movement restrictions, in addition to vaccination and testing. 

The WHO now point out that with more transmissible Omicron variants spreading, this approach is not "sustainable". 

"The virus is evolving, changing its behaviour", said their director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (right). "With that... changing your measures will be very important". 

China requires cities to enter strict lockdowns even if just a handful of cases are reported – one of the toughest policies in the world. During the latest wave, it is claimed that more than 60 million people have been living under some kind of lockdown. 

Methinks, China is doing the right thing and besides, the Chinese have the discipline to see Covid out. 

After all, a country like Malaysia with a population of only 33 million (33,143,949 as of May 20, 2022, based on Worldometer elaboration of the latest United Nations data) – had as recent as March 11, 32,800 cases in the country (My blog post “Covid in Malaysia: Trending Downwards” published March 15 refers). 

The Chinese government are adamant to stick to their zero-Covid policy.

A government statement in response to the comments by the WHO maintained that "China's huge population means that relaxing prevention and control measures will inevitably lead to the death of a large number of elderly people". They added that the current policy is "bringing Covid-19 under control at the minimum social cost in the shortest time possible". 

FYI, according to Worldometer, as at yesterday, China had just 193 cases and Malaysia reported 2,063 cases. 

The WHO director-general is talking through his hat!