理性分析：中国防疫如何打好“下半场”？

China continued to optimize measures against COVID-19, as the National Health Commission unveiled 10 new changes to restrictions on Dec 7.

It comes less than a month after China introduced its first set of 20 optimization rules to deal with the highly transmissible, but less virulent, Omicron subvariants.

The latest rules included removing the need for negative PCR test results and health codes for cross-regional travel and for entering public spaces, with the exception of nursing homes, hospitals, kindergartens and other places where there is a concentration of the most vulnerable.

People with mild and asymptomatic cases can now choose to quarantine at home instead of at a centralized quarantine facility. The purchase of over the counter remedies for fever, coughs and colds as well as antiviral drugs is no longer restricted.

Experts said the changes mark a major turning point in China’s fight against the novel coronavirus. This is because the country has the capacity and resilience to optimize its epidemic measures to reflect the changing challenges posed by current variants.

However, some foreign reports say that China’s epidemic strategy was slow to react to Omicron, and its triumph over the epidemic is a Pyrrhic victory that has come at great socioeconomic cost.

According to the World Health Organization, more than 642 million people around the world has been infected by COVID-19, resulting in over 6.62 million deaths.

Despite having 1.4 billion people, a massive elderly population, and a relative lack of medical resources compared to developed countries, China has one of the lowest number of infections and COVID related deaths in the world.

China’s epidemic strategy has been so effective that life expectancy actually increased from 77.9 in 2020 to 78.2 in 2021. And this was before the emergence of the Omicron variant, at a time when the early strains of the virus targeted the lungs and had a much higher incidence of severe illness and death.

On the economic front, China is one of the few major economies to see positive growth in 2020, and by 2021, the size of its economy had reached over 114 trillion yuan, registering an average growth of 5.1 percent over the two year period.

If successfully protecting lives and mitigating the impact of COVID-19 on the economy are not considered a victory, I don’t know what is.

As for adjusting epidemic policies, China has fine-tuned measures several times over the last three years. But we must keep in mind that this is a massive, systematic undertaking that requires taking many factors into account.

They include the pathogenic and epidemiological characteristics of the virus, population immunity, the medical system and the COVID-19 situation both at home and abroad.

One of the reasons why some Western countries chose to relax control measures earlier is because a large segment of their population had been infected in previous waves of COVID-19 and therefore had acquired immunity.

但这种方式会导致大量死亡，这是中国不可接受的。

But this approach cost many lives, something that China could not accept.

Another reason was that they had high vaccination rates, especially among the elderly, as well as more medical resources to treat the infected.

China, however, has a large aging population, many of whom have underlying health conditions. It also doesn’t have as many medical resources as Western countries, and the inoculation rate among vulnerable citizens, especially the elderly, remains low.

Moreover, China needed time to stock up on medicine and supplies. Now, many of these limiting conditions have been alleviated or managed, and therefore it has been able to optimize its control strategy and lay the foundation for overcoming the epidemic in the future.

Generally speaking, we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, though much work still remains, such as protecting our most vulnerable population, building immunity through vaccinations and coordinating epidemic policies with economic and social growth.

Winter is a season when Omicron and the flu can wreak havoc simultaneously, as we have seen in many other countries. So China’s changing epidemic policy isn’t to relax all measures, but a recalibration to tackle new challenges.

Therefore, experts said it is still important for people to be vigilant, be informed and be prepared. The objective of future COVID-19 control should focus on managing the disease, treating patients, and protecting the vulnerable population.

There is also a need to increase efforts to educate the public about the disease and combat misinformation about the virus, the vaccines, and medications for treating COVID.

And most importantly, get vaccinated, get boosters and get updated COVID-19 shots when they come out.

Protecting yourself is protecting your family and your community. Vaccines may not offer perfect protection, but they are still critical to upgrading the protection we have as immunity wanes over time.