Warning of 2m deaths cannot sway China to use vaccine from West
XI JINPING is refusing to use Western vaccines despite warnings that up to two million people could die in China if he ditches the country’s hardline zerocovid policy.
The Chinese president is “unwilling to take a better vaccine from the West, and is instead relying on a vaccine in China that’s just not nearly as effective against Omicron”, said Avril Haines, the US director of National Intelligence.
The country is at particular risk because it has relatively low vaccination rates among the elderly, and a lack of herd immunity.
Ms Haines told a defence forum in California this weekend that the US does not perceive recent protests in China as a threat to Communist Party rule, but added how they develop “will be important to Xi’s standing”.
China has one of the world’s toughest approaches to the virus, which has kept deaths low.
According to official figures, there have been fewer than 6,000 deaths.
But it has achieved this through mass testing, citywide lockdowns and mandatory quarantines, severely disrupting the freedoms of its citizens and battering the economy.
Late last month, public frustration spilled over into unprecedented protests in more than 20 cities. They followed a fire in the western region of Xinjiang that killed at least 10 people – with citizens suggesting Covid restrictions had prevented the victims from escaping, something local authorities have denied.
Demonstrations in cities including Shanghai morphed into calls for Xi and the ruling Communist Party to step down, open expressions of dissent that are extremely rare in China. Police detained an unknown number of people during the protests.
Since those demonstrations took place a week ago, authorities have moved to stop others happening with a heavy police presence.
But China has also been easing Covid restrictions. At the weekend, residents in Beijing cheered the removal of some testing booths, with people no longer needing to show negative test results to enter supermarkets. From Monday, residents will not need to present results to take the metro. The tech hub city of Shenzhen announced commuters would no longer need to show a negative test result to use public transport or enter parks.
In a paper published by the Shanghai Journal of Preventive Medicine last month, Zhou Jiatong, head of the Centre for Disease Control in China’s Guangxi region, said that mainland China faces more than two million deaths if it loosens Covid restrictions in the same way Hong Kong did earlier this year. On Sunday, China reported 31,824 new daily cases. There was no sign of any significant unrest this weekend, although police were out in force in several areas of Beijing and Shanghai.
Sun Chunlan, China’s vice premier, said last week the ability of the virus to cause disease was weakening – a change in messaging which suggests China could start to significantly loosen its zero-covid stance.