China surge proves the folly of shooting for ‘zero COVID-19’
From the outset, mystery has shrouded the COVID-19 pandemic in China. The virus’ origin remains unknown, important Chinese journalists and key scientists have been muted, and case and death totals reported by China’s government have been unbelievably low — the United States and most of Western Europe have reported 500-1,000 times as many per-capita deaths.
There are several theories on the reason for the low numbers coming out of China: poor reporting, deliberate or otherwise; a population with immunity, natural or acquired through previous infections; or the Chinese government’s efforts to reach zero infections through mass testing, lockdowns, quarantine and contact tracing. China is the last major country attempting to eliminate COVID-19; others have tried with disappointing and, in some cases, disastrous results.
But the Chinese zero COVID-19 policy has now been put to the test by the highly infectious omicron variant and subvariant. The focal point is the tight government lockdown in China’s largest city, Shanghai. Reports emanating from that city are harrowing. People are prevented from leaving home for any reason — they depend on the government to deliver medications, food and water. Parents who test positive are sent to isolation centers, separated from their children. Cats and dogs left behind when owners are sent away are being killed by public health authorities. Businesses are closing, and there are reports of people scavenging food and committing suicide.
According to the BBC, centralized “isolation facilities, many using only camp beds, with no showers or other facilities, are bursting with infected people squashed in together. One of China’s few reliable media outlets, Caixin, has reported that close contacts of infected people will be moved to neighboring provinces.” … Even with these measures, Shanghai is reporting more than 10,000 new cases per day and things may worsen because China’s non-mRNA vaccine appears to be less effective than its Western counterparts.
While China clings to its zero COVID-19 approach, other countries have abandoned it in the face of the omicron surge. South Korea, praised internationally for its control measures after an initial surge, was overwhelmed by omicron and now ranks eighth in worldwide cases, a higher per-capita case rate than the U.S. Meanwhile, New Zealand, an island country that, as of February, had recorded fewer than 30,000 cases over the first two years of the pandemic, has now seen 800,000 cases total. Hong Kong, with just 200 total deaths during the pandemic at the beginning of the year, had the highest per-capita death rate in the world in March.
Why has zero COVID-19 proved unattainable? Control of COVID-19 poses problems different from previous epidemics. The virus is evolving and mutating at a surprisingly rapid rate, and current variants present a greater risk of personto-person transmission. But the real sticking point has been extensive transmission … by infected, asymptomatic people. This has complicated the pandemic from the beginning and made it difficult to know whom to test or isolate.
Contact tracing, a basic public health tool used successfully for previous communicable diseases — especially those transmitted sexually — is essentially impossible. Contact tracing works when symptomatic patients seek care, enter the public health surveillance tracking system and identify their contacts. Those exposed to contagious individuals are then located, and advised about quarantine, testing and treatment options. But millions of dollars and a lot of personnel have been ineffective in tracing COVID-19 when asymptomatic patients are unaware they should be tested or fail to report a positive result if they test at home. The contacts of those infected are often unknown, especially when the virus is spread in crowded indoor locations.
South Korea had the most extensive contact tracing system in the world, but abandoned it recently in the face of the omicron surge. Jang Young-ook, a researcher at the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy studying global pandemic response policies, said, “The size of the surge Korea is seeing now renders contact tracing almost pointless. That makes collecting personal information with QR (computerized personal) codes kind of unjustified.”
This is basically an admission that zero COVID-19 is a pipe dream, a lesson the residents of Shanghai are learning the hard way.
When the history is written about the COVID-19 pandemic of the early 2020s, an essential chapter will be the futile quest for zero COVID-19. It will be symbolized by a drone hovering over deserted Shanghai streets, blaring the disheartening epitaph for zero COVID-19 that China has been broadcasting to its people: “Please comply with COVID restrictions. Control your soul’s desire for freedom. Do not open the window or sing.”