2nd wave of virus ‘unlikely’
Wuhan potentially safest city in China now: expert
Will the lifting of the lockdown in Wuhan, a city hit hardest in the country by the COVID-19 pandemic, along with emerging asymptomatic cases, give way to a second wave of the outbreak that had engulfed the city for the last three months?
Residents in Wuhan, who are about to embrace a normal life after enduring two months indoors, familiarizing themselves with every possible good hygiene habit, turning themselves into amateur coronavirus experts, as well as Wuhan authorities, who drew lessons from previous missteps, orchestrated detailed viral prevention plans to cover every possible loophole for large-scale infections, using their action to whisk off the possibility of a second wave, firmly believe that
Wuhan, after all it had suffered and learned, could be potentially the safest place in China now.
“Don’t get too close to me, and put on your face mask, young lady! You are not getting any fish if you don’t respect virus prevention rules,” yelled fish vendor Zhang from Baishazhou market, Wuhan’s biggest agricultural products market, while selling fish to a customer.
Although entering the market requires temperature tests and inspection of “green codes,” which suggest the user is symptom-free and has had no contact with suspected or confirmed coronavirus patients, Zhang’s worry for the contagion is not soothed.
“Don’t you know there are asymptomatic patients? Do you think those measures can help detect them? The virus is so canny, we have to always be on
case from Iran in Northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region on February 26, the country’s battle against the virus has been expanding from the domestic domain to a larger scope. As the global battle rages on, authorities have stepped up prevention and control work in fending off risks of imported infections, particularly after China recorded no new domestic cases for the first time on March 19 while steadily and cautiously resuming business in preventing a resurgence of locally transmitted infections.
Suifenhe, a border town of China and Russia in northeastern Heilongjiang Province, has been on high alert in recent days as the city, with about 70,000 residents with limited medical resources, has seen a rapid increase in imported COVID-19 infections.
Following fewer flights between Russia and China amid the outbreak, imported cases through the Suifenhe land port increased. Official data showed that from March 21 to Tuesday, 2,443 people crossed through the Suifenhe land port, with confirmed imported cases reaching 84 and asymptotic patients 127, media reported.
The Heilongjiang health authority said on Thursday that the province recorded no new domestic infections on Wednesday but 40 new imported cases from Russia, of which 39 were through the MoscowVladivostok-Suifenhe route.
Starting Wednesday, all residential compounds in Suifenhe began conducting seal-off management, which allows one person per household to go shopping every three days, which some local residents consider the strictest prevention and control measures since the outbreak, online videos showed.
Prevention and control work against imported infections has also been shifting its focus from screening arrivals from hardest-hit countries at the early stages of the outbreak including Iran, the UK and Italy to arrivals from those recording rapid increases in domestic infections, especially countries that have not flattened the curve of the pandemic, some medical experts said.
Some countries have yet to achieve an inflection point and daily confirmed cases continue to rise, while the virus spread could be seasonal. The situation in countries and regions like India and Africa, which lack adequate prevention with limited medical resources, may become more severe in the coming months.
The Chinese mainland reported 61 new imported cases on Wednesday, bringing the total to 1,103. And asymptomatic cases from foreign countries reached 28.
With the strengthening of international flight controls as imported cases grow, land ports have recently become the focus of virus prevention.
Several medical experts who spoke to the Global Times said the public is highly likely to coexist with the coronavirus for a relatively long time, and while the vaccine is highly anticipated, it won’t come within the coming months.
As regular prevention and control work continues in several battlegrounds such as community-based prevention work and border customs inspection, it is also time to embrace the new normal.
Changing mindset
As the pandemic continues to worsen globally, the blame game has erupted, including ideological confrontations amplified by different narratives, especially between China and the West.
The crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to have just begun, and there will be more and more serious challenges from the pandemic in geopolitics, some Chinese political observers said.
Some predicted that the outbreak would lead to more severe turbulence and severely impact the global order, giving rise to extreme nationalism and populism, and China could become the target of Western countries like the US to divert their domestic disappointment and anger over their failure in handling the outbreak. Preventing imported infections and insisting on the country’s continuous opening-up to the world are major tasks for the second half of the war against COVID-19, observers said.
“We need to focus on the aftermath of the outbreak during the second half of the battle, including advancing social and economic development as well as focusing on the public mindset,” Yang Zhanqiu, a virologist at Wuhan University, told the Global Times on Thursday.
From the early stages of the outbreak marked by anxiety and outrage toward a delayed response, to containing the domestic transmission within two months, “there has been a new consensus among Chinese officials and the public that the confidence in our institutional advantages has been significantly strengthened,” he said.