China’s merciless Covid clampdown
Chinese officials, under “mounting pressure” to help the 25 million people in Shanghai “struggling with food shortages and poor medical care”, have started to lift parts of their strict Covid lockdown, says Didi Tang in The Times. Those living in areas that have been free of infection for 14 days will now be allowed to leave their homes. Other parts of the city remain under “draconian restrictions”. Some people have even been padlocked into their flats or compounds.
The restrictions brought China’s largest onshore financial hub and biggest city to a “grinding halt”, says the Financial Times. Shanghai’s importance to the wider Chinese economy is such that this has disrupted supply lines, both domestically and to other countries in Asia, exacerbating strains on transport and logistics. The waiting times for semiconductor deliveries are already on the rise.
China needs to rethink its entire approach to Covid, says The Washington Post. In the early stages of the crisis a case could be made that its “zero-Covid” policy of “clamping down mercilessly whenever an infection was discovered” spared China’s population the sacrifices and misery seen elsewhere. Now, however, with the number of cases of the more contagious, but less deadly Omicron variant continuing to rise, and residents “growing desperate”, China needs to learn lessons from the rest of the world. In particular, it needs to learn how to use mitigation strategies, especially mass vaccination, something that China lags behind on, to allow “more of a return to normal”.