Shanghai reaffirmed Wednesday it would maintain the “zero-COVID” approach to eliminate a waning outbreak in China’s largest city after the head of the World Health Organization said it was not sustainable and urged China to change strategies.
While progress has been made, relaxing prevention and control measures could allow the virus to rebound, deputy director of Shanghai’s Center for Disease Control Wu Huanyu told reporters.
“At the same time, now is also the most difficult and critical moment for our city to achieve zero-COVID,” Wu said at a daily briefing.
“Should we relax our vigilance, the epidemic may rebound, so it is necessary to persistently implement the prevention and control work without relaxing,” he said.
Wu gave no indication he was aware of the comments by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who said he had discussing with Chinese experts the need to change to a new approach in light of new knowledge about the virus.
“When we talk about the ‘zero-COVID,’ we don’t think that it’s sustainable, considering the behavior of the virus now and what we anticipate in the future,” Tedros said at a news briefing Tuesday.
“And especially when we have now a good knowledge, understanding of the virus and when we have good tools to use, transitioning to another strategy will be very important,” he said.
Tedros was joined by Mike Ryan, the WHO’s emergencies chief, who said all pandemic control actions should “show due respect to individual and human rights.”
Countries need to “balance the control measures, the impact on society, the impact on the economy. That is not always an easy calibration to make,” Ryan said.
China’s ruling Communist Party has strictly controlled all discussion about its controversial approach, which aims to totally stamp out outbreaks, and said it would tolerate no criticism. The entirely state-controlled media did not report on the comments by Tedros and Ryan and references to them on the Chinese internet appeared to have been removed by censors.
Footage has also emerged on social media showing extreme disinfection taking place inside homes where people have been removed after testing positive. Widespread use of industrial scale disinfection has been a key tactic used by authorities.
State censors have moved quickly to remove questions about the legality of the disinfection and also of the moving large numbers of people from their homes, despite testing negative.
In some cases, people who have been removed from their homes and taken into central quarantine have been told to leave a key to their home, usually in the door, so officials can come in and disinfect the space. Some legal figures have questioned if this move is "constitutional".
Shanghai recorded about 15,000 cases on Thursday, accounting for the vast majority nationwide, despite weeks of the world's strictest lockdown measures.
And millions more Chinese citizens are set to be subjected to draconian Covid restrictions as the sprawling capital Beijing prepares to go into lockdown.
President Xi Jinping reaffirmed his commitment to a zero Covid policy on Friday, putting China at odds with much of the world. While many countries are dropping restrictions and trying to live with the virus, China is keeping its international borders largely shut and closing off entire cities to all but essential travel.
Shanghai, China’s largest city and financial capital, was placed under lockdown in March to fight the spread the COVID-19 pandemic.
The lockdown saw residents scrambling for access to food and medicine with photographs and videos going viral on social media.
