Although China’s public health experts have worked quietly on steps toward co-existing with SARSCoV2, President Xi Jinping reiterated that the country must persist with its “zero COVID” strategy and harsh lockdowns.
A haunting video that went viral last week showed residents of Shanghai screaming from high-rise windows into the night—a collective complaint about the harsh COVID-19 lockdown the city’s 26 million inhabitants have been under since the end of March. Many have had trouble obtaining food, essential medicines, and daily necessities.
China’s devotion to “zero COVID” reflects a fear of an explosion of serious illness and death if Omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2, now largely one called BA.2, escape control. More than 2 years into the pandemic, the country is still not fully prepared; China's leadership has squandered the grace period it earned with the zero COVID strategy, Huang says. “Until November last year, there was no serious effort to prioritize the vaccination of the elderly,” he says.
Mainland China has a similar problem. Airfinity, a London-based health analytics firm, reported that nearly 19% of Chinese people over age 60 were unvaccinated as of mid-March. Among those in their 80s, just over 50% have gotten two shots and only 19% have received boosters, Zeng Yixin, deputy director of the National Health Commission, reported at an 18 March press briefing.
“Hesitancy among older adults is somehow rational in the context of a zero-COVID strategy,” says University of Hong Kong epidemiologist Ben Cowling. “If a vaccine has minimal but nonzero risk, whereas the risk of COVID infection might be expected to be minimal, some may prefer to take their chances with the virus.”
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