Hong Kong (CNN) — To the extent that confinement in shanghai due to covid-19 leaves its residents in a bind for get food or receive medical care, citizens in other parts of China fear that similar strict measures could affect them. Even as officials try to reassure the public that they are well prepared.
In the southern port city of Guangzhou, all 18 million residents had to undergo mandatory testing after a handful of Covid-19 cases were detected last week. Authorities there insisted that food and other supplies were well covered, despite a local newspaper reporting shortages in supermarkets due to “panic buying”.
Meanwhile, posts and articles on how to prepare for potential COVID-19 outbreaks circulated on Chinese social media. Content included tips on how to store vegetables to last and what to prepare for quarantine stays. Other articles discussed how cities made sure they had enough supplies to cover lockdowns.
A worker walks through a temporary hospital for COVID-19 patients in Shanghai on April 7.
The signs of public concern come as China enters a difficult phase in its fight against the virus. With the outbreak in Shanghai and another in Jilin province in the northeast of the country, the highly transmissible variant of omicron BA.2 has spread to levels never seen before in China.
While the vast majority of cases in recent outbreaks have been in Jilin and Shanghai, infections have also been detected in some 29 provinces and municipalities.
This represents a major challenge for the Communist Party of China, which remains steadfast in its “zero covid-19” commitment to eradicate the virus.
And the Shanghai experience could set a precedent for increasingly stringent measures elsewhere to control the spread of omicron, experts warn.
“Even with massive testing, we can assume that the virus reached beyond Shanghai before the city went into lockdown,” said health security expert Nicholas Thomas, an associate professor at the City University of Hong Kong.
“Although the targeted approach may be resumed in smaller cities, the background to Shanghai will lead to massive lockdowns being implemented again in larger cities in the short to medium term.”
Simultaneous outbreaks?
All this happens in a politically sensitive moment for Beijing, on the eve of a political shakeup this fall, which happens twice a decade. Chinese leader Xi Jinping is expected to take office for a third term, something unprecedented in decades.
Analysts have long signaled that China will not risk relaxing its zero-Covid-19 strategy before then for fear of a destabilizing outbreak. Health authorities have warned that the virus could overwhelm health care systems and endanger the elderly, who have delays in vaccination.
But even as Beijing clings to its zero-tolerance approach to Covid-19, it faces the prospect of multiple major outbreaks as omicron spreads.
Resources would be severely affected if China sticks to its usual manual of strategies, in which doctors from all over the country and health officials from Beijing travel to outbreak hotspots to support measures ranging from mass screening tests to the construction of temporary hospitals.
It also raises the possibility that local authorities will implement stricter controls to ensure that the spread of the virus does not reach the levels seen in Shanghai.
Authorities in this city were criticized for initially taking a more selective approach, compared to the southern city of Shenzhen, which brought an outbreak under control last month. quickly shutting down the entire city for a week.
In Shanghai, where some residents have been under confinement for weeks, the municipal authorities announced on Monday the provisional relaxation of some measures for residents in areas considered low risk.
The possibility of new lockdowns “is a reality faced by many Chinese, due to the nature of the virus… (and because) the zero covid-19 strategy needs to use lockdowns to manage this issue,” Alfred Wu explained. , Associate Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.
“China’s propaganda also makes public policy change very difficult. Every time… (leaders) say ‘we are successful, we are the only ones in the world who can contain the virus.’ month say this (about Shanghai), but other places will be suffering.
Mistrust in Shanghai
Meanwhile, repeated lockdowns and other restrictions could also take a greater human toll, especially as some recent omicron outbreaks have been persistent.
In both Shanghai and Changchun, the capital of Jilin province, the number of cases continued to rise despite lockdowns. Which leaves people wondering when freedom will come and, in some cases, even daily necessities or access to health care.
A health worker conducts door-to-door screening tests in Changchun on April 5.
In the wake of the challenges faced by confined residents in Shanghai and Jilin, citizens have raised important questions in the online discussions on whether the cost of controlling the virus is greater than the risk of the virus itself.
“Perhaps the most devastating legacy of Shanghai is that the government will have to rebuild people’s trust in the medical sector and in government to deal with the pandemic effectively,” said Thomas of City University.
“Otherwise, your ability to control future outbreaks will be much more limited,” he said.
Next phase
Multiple restrictions are already being implemented across the country.
Following the mass testing, Guangzhou authorities switched school classes online, saying people should not leave the city unless necessary and that doing so would require a negative Covid-19 test.
The city reported 37 cases on Sunday, after nearly a dozen infections were reported a day earlier.
In the central city of Wuhan, where the virus was first identified in late 2019, passengers riding the city’s subway now have to show a negative Covid-19 test.
And in Beijing, residents of a so-called high-risk neighborhood had their movements restricted. Authorities in the capital said last week that hundreds of close contacts were under surveillance, as they scrambled to trace “multiple chains of transmission”, including those linked to a clothing store and a kindergarten.
The neighboring cities of Shanghai have decreed their own confinements in the last week, fearing that contagion will occur. In nearby Zhejiang province, authorities vowed to tighten entry controls in the region.
All of these buds are still small, for now. But the effectiveness of these measures and their long-term impact on people’s lives is still unknown.
“Because the omicron variant is so transmissible and, in most cases, mild, it is much more difficult to prevent spread once it is established compared to earlier variants,” said Alex Cook, an associate professor at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at the National University of Singapore.
“Although China has been amazingly successful in its zero COVID-19 policy until recently, it is unclear whether the strategy remains viable in the omicron era,” he said.
CNN’s Beijing bureau contributed to this report