Health experts proposed detailed plans for a gradual end to anti-virus controls, but the Chinese government rebuffed them and dropped restrictions in December with no preparations to cope with the chaotic aftermath.
suddenly scrapped onerous zero-COVID measures in December, the country wasn’t ready for a massive onslaught of cases. Hospitals turned away ambulances, crematoriums burned bodies around the clock, and relatives hauled dead loved ones to warehouses for lack of storage space.
For two years, China stood out for its tough but successful controls against the virus, credited with saving millions of lives as other countries struggled with stop-and-start lockdowns. But with the emergence of the highly infectious omicron variant last year, many of China’s top medical experts and officials worried zero-COVID was unsustainable.
Unrest began to simmer, with demonstrations, factory riots, and shuttered businesses. The pressure mounted until the authorities suddenly yielded, allowing the virus to sweep the country with no warning — and with deadly consequence. It concluded it was time for China to begin preparations for a possible reopening. It ran over 100 pages long and included detailed proposals to boost China’s stalling vaccination campaign, increase ICU bed capacity, stock up on antivirals, and order patients with mild COVID-19 symptoms to stay at home, one of the people said. It also included a proposal to designate Hainan, a tropical island in the country’s south, as a pilot zone to experiment with relaxing controls.
“Resolutely uphold zero-COVID," an editorial in the state-run People’s Daily said. “Persistence is victory,” said Xi.After Shanghai locked down, Chinese public health experts stopped speaking publicly about preparing for an exit. None dared openly challenge a policy supported by Xi. Some experts were blacklisted from Chinese media, one told the AP.
Public health experts split into camps. Those who thought zero-COVID unsustainable — like Gao and Zhang, the Shanghai doctor — fell silent. But Liang Wannian, then head of the central government’s expert working group on COVID-19, kept vocally advocating for zero-COVID as a way to defeat the virus. Though Liang has a doctorate in epidemiology, he is sometimes accused of pushing the party line rather than science-driven policies.
“Every day, we were flooded with oceans of unverified data,” said a China CDC official. “Every week we heard about new variants. … Yes, we should find a way out of zero-COVID, but when and how?” Risking an outbreak was off the table. Though scientists from Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan wrote internal petitions urging the government to start preparations, they were told to stay silent until the congress was over.
Yet omicron kept spreading. As the congress approached, authorities began hiding cases and resorting to secret lockdowns and quarantines. In an internal document published Oct. 28, obtained by The Associated Press and reported here for the first time, Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at China’s CDC, criticized the Beijing city government for excessive COVID controls, saying it had “no scientific basis." He called it a “distortion” of the central government’s zero-COVID policy, which risked “intensifying public sentiment and causing social dissatisfaction.
Along with the lobbying, pressure to reopen came from outbreaks flaring up across the country. A Nov. 5 internal notice issued by Beijing health authorities and obtained by the AP called the virus situation “severe.” In Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province, officials canceled mass testing and opened the city, only to reinstate harsh measures days later. Xi called city officials, instructing them to have measures that were neither too strict nor too soft, according to a person familiar with the matter.
References to “zero-COVID” vanished from government statements. State newswire Xinhua said the pandemic was causing “fatigue, anxiety and tension,” and that the cost of controlling it was increasing day by day.
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