(MENAFN- Asia Times)
China has locked down two major cities – Shenzhen in Guangdong and Changchun in Jilin province – after virus outbreaks were reported in different parts of the country on Sunday.
A total of 3,122 Covid-19 cases were identified across 19 provinces in mainland China on Sunday, including 2,156 cases in Jilin province. At least 26 officials in Guangdong, Jilin and Shandong provinces have been removed for failing to contain the virus over the past few weeks.
Chinese health experts said Chinese cities should maintain a“dynamic zero Covid” policy, but avoid having prolonged lockdowns as the Omicron variant was less lethal than the previous strains. They said China should strike a balance between virus control and economic growth.
Some economists estimated that if more cities followed Shenzhen's lead and locked down for a week, China's economic growth would be slowed by 0.8 percentage points for 2022.
When the highly-contagious Omicron variant emerged in late 2021, most Chinese cities and provinces could still achieve their zero infection goals, except Xi'an, Tianjin and Henan provinces.
The citywide lockdown of Xi'an was controversial due to shortages of food and necessities in the city and the fact that some elderly people and pregnant women could not be admitted to hospitals as they did not have negative test results to show.
On January 29, the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council unveiled new guidelines with five rules, which forbid local governments from stopping migrant workers returning to their home towns during the Chinese New Year holidays, expanding lockdown areas with no limits, having lockdowns at a provincial level, isolating local travelers coming from low-risk places and freely extending quarantine periods.
The State Council also welcomed the public to help monitor their local governments and check whether they had tightened their anti-epidemic rules irregularly. Since then, China has gone through the Lunar New Year in early February, the Beijing Olympic Games between February 4 and 20 and the“two sessions,” which refer to the annual meetings of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and the National People's Congress, between March 4 and 11.
On March 9, 344 cases were reported in Jilin province in a single day with most identified at the Jilin Agricultural Science and Technology University. Students in the university called for help on social media as they could not leave the campus and had insufficient food and necessities.
Omicron spreads
On March 11, 1,100 cases were reported in Jilin province, 64% of them asymptomatic. On the same day, the provincial government announced a lockdown of Changchun.
On Sunday, 66 people tested positive in Shenzhen, which on the same day announced a seven-day citywide lockdown. The Shenzhen government said virus outbreaks in Futian, Nanshan, Luohu and Longgang districts could have originated from some imported cases from Hong Kong in mid-February.
“The number of infections continues to increase and there have been many small-scale clusters in urban villages and factories. This suggests a high risk of community spread and further precautions are still needed,” said Huang Qiang, the deputy secretary-general of the Shenzhen municipal government.
In the past few days, many Chinese provinces and cities also reported Covid cases. In Shanghai, four local infections plus 34 asymptomatic patients were identified on Monday.
Last Friday, about 49,000 people were locked up and required to undergo Covid tests at the venue of the China International Beauty Expo, a trade show for cosmetic product makers in Guangzhou after the health authority said one infected person had been found.
During the six-hour-long testing, some brawls broke out at the venue, but no new cases were found.
On Sunday morning, the State Council held a video conference with all departments and local governments, calling on them to stick with the central government's zero Covid policy.
On Sunday, six officials in Guangdong, including Huang Shouying, the deputy director of the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department, and Wang Changqing, the executive vice-mayor of Dongguan, tested positive.
Wang Lu, the mayor and deputy Party chief of Jilin city, Li Xin, the head of the Jiutai district of Changchun, and Gao Yutang, the director of the Changchun Municipal Health Commission, were removed. Last Thursday, 17 Shandong officials were punished after severe loopholes in daily epidemic prevention tasks were found.
The city lockdowns and punishment of local officials showed a huge contrast to the situation in Hong Kong, which reported 26,908 infections and 286 deaths on Monday, but had no timetable for a citywide lockdown or mandatory testing scheme.
On February 28, Zeng Guang, a member of the high-level expert panel of the National Health Commission, said in an article on Weibo that“China would soon unveil a roadmap for a Chinese-style 'living with the virus' strategy.” His comments were quoted by state media.
Last July, infectious disease expert Zhang Wenhong was criticized by state media for promoting a“living with the virus” strategy.
On Sunday, Zhang said in a Weibo post that it's important to suppress the local infections, but it did not mean that China should have prolonged lockdown measures and Covid tests. He said the most urgent tasks for mainland China were giving elderly people a booster shot, sourcing Covid medicines and rapid test kits and improving the triage systems in hospitals.
“More cities may follow the practice of Shenzhen,” said Raymond Yeung, chief economist for Greater China at ANZ, in a note Monday.“If the lockdown is extended, China's economic growth will be significantly affected.”
Yeung said further anti-epidemic measures could cut China's GDP growth by 0.8 percentage points. ANZ maintained its forecast of China's GDP growth for 2022 at 5%, less than the government's target of about 5.5%.
Nomura Holdings Inc expected China's GDP to grow only 4.3% this year, compared with economists' consensus forecast of 5.2%. It said the country would face high economic costs with its zero Covid policy.
Read: China considering plans for 'living with the virus'
Follow Jeff Pao on Twitter at @jeffpao3
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