Covid-19 in China

[Randy W]

Shanghai Converts Large-Scale Venues Into Makeshift Quarantine Centers

 

[Randy W]

One City, Two Lockdowns: Shanghai Faces Its Toughest COVID-19 Test
After dismissing lockdown possibilities, the city adapts to the country’s pandemic control playbook to mass test its nearly 25 million residents.

A police officer wearing personal protective equipment guards as residents queue to enter a food market in Shanghai, March 28, 2022. Shen Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images/VCG

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It was a surprise move — though not entirely unexpected — after the city government time and again quelled rumors about such lockdowns amid mounting coronavirus cases. Police even detained two men for starting such rumors last week.

Citywide lockdowns started as a key virus-control measure since the early days of the pandemic in the central city of Wuhan, and have been effectively implemented in several cities including the cities of Xi’an, Shenzhen, and those in Jilin province most recently. But health experts and some officials said as recently as Saturday that such moves could prove costly for a city like Shanghai, a city of nearly 25 million people and the country’s financial hub.

But the city adopted part of the central government’s playbook, announcing a two-phase lockdown to test its entire population and eliminate any possible chain of COVID-19 transmission. On Monday, Shanghai logged another daily record of 3,500 infections for the previous day — also the most cases nationally — which have put a strain on the city’s health care system.

During the lockdowns, residents will be barred from leaving their homes. Public transport and ride-hailing services will be suspended, and only those in public services and essential services such as health care and food delivery would be allowed to move around. Companies and factories have either suspended manufacturing or allowed their employees to work remotely.

“It was such a panic,” 28-year-old Zhao in Pudong recalled the scene after the government’s announcement Sunday. “Everyone just put whatever they could get in their bags and the line at the cashier was unbearable.”

She gave up and went home.

 

 

 

[Randy W]

“Everybody’s fighting over food.”
As Shanghai works through its most wide-reaching lockdowns of the pandemic, panic buying has hit many of the city’s markets. It seems like everyone is rushing out to stock up — and if they’re not, they’re probably listening to the latest dialect rap about it.

from the Sixth Tone on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/sixthtone/posts/3190906291228209

 

The Shanghai Lockdown Rap: ‘Get Fed, Go on Get Tested’
The city’s fight to defeat COVID-19 — and to buy fresh vegetables — now has an anthem.

 

Edited March 30, 2022 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

Robotic Dog Barks Pandemic Prevention Advice at Residents
How is Shanghai handling its mass COVID-19 outbreak? One community has unleashed a robotic dog to bark pandemic prevention advice at residents. A community worker said that the robot, which has a speaker taped to its back, has helped conserve manpower.

from the Sixth Tone on Facebook (it's still here, but no longer shareable)
https://www.facebook.com/sixthtone/videos/345610370942737/

 

 

Edited April 1, 2022 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

As China remains adamant in maintaining a “zero-COVID” policy, locking down cities to stamp out every single infection, the strategy has been gradually testing people’s patience. Some residents are getting more worried about their immediate medical needs than the coronavirus itself.

Read more: http://ow.ly/P7Xp50IwXTi

from the Sixth Tone 

 

Jilin Lockdowns Add Stress to Residents With Medical Needs
Many parts of the province are currently under various restrictions to curb rising COVID-19 cases.

Local residents receive COVID-19 test in Jilin, Jilin province, March 30, 2022. VCG

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A 25-year-old, surnamed Wang, who lives in the outskirts of Changchun told Sixth Tone that he had been struggling for a week to get fresh vegetables, as the lockdown restricted people from leaving their homes. Online shops, he said, were either closed or overwhelmed with orders.

Wang said more stringent controls were imposed on his entire neighborhood after health officials confirmed a single COVID-19 case there. The area was then labeled as risky and residents were required to follow stringent measures.

“Everyone seems to be having a hard time,” he said, adding that while younger people were more tech-savvy and able to find solutions, the elderly were likely to be isolated and more vulnerable.

Another Jilin native, surnamed Hu, currently working in the neighboring Liaoning province, agreed. He said he was concerned about his parents who live by themselves in the city of Dehui, particularly his 55-year-old father who had ostomy surgery last year.

Since the surgery created an opening in his father’s abdomen to discharge urine and other bodily waste, Hu said his father has had to rely on special medical products, but struggled to find them following the lockdown.

 

 . . . and C-Milk's interpretation of the whole picture

 

[Randy W]

And the spill-over to other countries' economies -

The 800-Pound Gorilla Affecting Your Supply Chain

from China Law Blog on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/ChinaLawBlog/posts/10158305886711109

 

The 800-Pound Gorilla Affecting Your Supply Chain

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At this writing, Shanghai – with its 26 million residents – is in near-total lockdown, as are the manufacturing centers of Dongguan and Shenzhen in southern China; Changchun and Jilin City in Jilin Province; and Langfang, near Beijing. To understand the scale of the lockdowns, Dongguan, which most people who don’t manufacture goods in China have never heard of, has 7.5 million residents, nearly twice as many as Los Angeles, which is the second-largest U.S. city by population. Shenzhen, which (partially) emerged from its own lockdown just over a week ago, has a population of 12.6 million and accounts for 16% of China’s high-tech exports. It is to hardware manufacturing as Silicon Valley is to software innovation.

The effect on manufacturers is already profound. Some global companies (e.g. Toyota, Volkswagen) have halted production; others are prioritizing work for their biggest customers, at the expense of their smaller ones. If you’re Apple or Nike, you may continue to receive product; if you’re Acme Widget Co., you may not. I have been on the receiving end of many phone calls and emails from “Acme Widget like” companies that involve the plaintive question: “Do you have any ideas on where I can get the widgets we will need to stay in business?”

A recent Foreign Policy article about potential COVID-related problems for China manufacturers noted that many supply chains are too complex to fully comprehend. “‘Most companies simply have no way of knowing all the participants in their supply chain,’ said Michael Essig, a professor of supply management at Bundeswehr University in Munich, in 2019. He added, ‘Let’s assume that a global company like Volkswagen has around 5,000 direct suppliers and that each has around 250 subcontractors. That means that the company has 1.25 million second-tier suppliers. With each additional step, the supply chain grows exponentially.’”

An additional complication for supply chain managers and CEOs is the perennial difficulty of obtaining accurate information about China. “State secrets” can include “secret matters in national economic and social development”; information that “harms the political or economic interests of the state in its dealings with foreign countries”; and information that “weakens the economic or technological strength of the nation.”

In 1992, China’s National Administration for the Protection of State Secrets issued a regulation – Regulation on the Protection of State Secrets in News Publishing – specifying the obligations of news and media organizations in relation to the protection of state secrets. Article 7 reads: “Information intended to be made public by news publishing units or by units that provide information shall be checked by those units in accordance with the relevant regulations on the protection of state secrets. Where it is unclear whether or not a piece of information involves state secrets, such information shall be submitted to the relevant department in charge or to higher authorities or units for examination and approval.”

What is a China state secret? The state will decide.

 

 

[Randy W]

Empty Shanghai Streets Amid COVID Lockdown
Shanghai, a city of 25 million people, has come to a standstill. 

The government announced Sunday a two-phase lockdown measure to make its 25 million residents quarantine at home. 

Here’s what that looks like.

from the Sixth Tone on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/sixthtone/videos/521144109398322/

A total of 6,000 medical workers from across China arrived in Shanghai on Sunday to help the city of 25 million people tackle its biggest COVID-19 outbreak since the start of the pandemic, The Paper reported.

from the Sixth Tone on Facebook 
https://www.facebook.com/sixthtone/posts/3194410997544405

How four Chinese cities responded to the country’s largest COVID-19 outbreak since 2020.

https://www.facebook.com/sixthtone/posts/3193876617597843

 

[Randy W]

How four Chinese cities responded to the country’s largest COVID-19 outbreak since 2020.

from the Sixth Tone on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/sixthtone/posts/3193876617597843

Update: Portraits of Four Lockdowns, in Graphs
How four Chinese cities responded to the country’s largest COVID-19 outbreak since 2020.

 

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On the last day of March, China added 1,787 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 5,442 asymptomatic infections. These two figures represent a huge increase from our last count, on March 16.

 . . .

Meanwhile, the southern border city of Shenzhen has all put this outbreak behind it. After two weeks of general lockdown, the Shenzhen government announced the city’s return to normalcy March 27. Schools, offices, and public places have reopened, and almost all anti-COVID measures have ended, with the exception of requirements for residents to take regular tests.

 . . .

In the northeast, the hard-hit cities of Jilin and Changchun are holding steady at total lockdown. Local governments are now putting more attention on getting supplies to their residents.

 . . .

According to the government of Changchun, by midnight March 27, a total of 44,000 vegetable kits were distributed to residents, ranging in price from 40 yuan to 300 yuan ($6.3 - $47). These packages included potatoes, cabbages, leeks, spinach, zucchini, tomatoes, eggplants, and other common vegetables. Some also contained meat, fruit, and noodles.

 

 

 

[Randy W]

#OpenComment Should China loosen its strict pandemic control measures? This thorny question has triggered a heated debate online, especially as the lockdown in #Shanghai is affecting many residents' livelihood.

As a country with a population of more than 1.4 billion, of which more than 18 percent are aged 60 or above, China cannot afford to let its guard down. https://bit.ly/35W5I20

from China Daily on Facebook 
https://www.facebook.com/chinadaily/posts/342375234586728

China cannot afford to loosen pandemic fight

By Yan Lun | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2022-04-08 18:36

People work at the National Exhibition and Convention Center in East China's Shanghai, April 6, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]

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Should China loosen its strict pandemic control measures? This thorny question has triggered a heated debate online, especially as the lockdown in Shanghai is affecting many residents' livelihood.

Indeed the local authorities have to do much more to ensure people get their daily necessities at the time of a lockdown, minimize the negative influence on ordinary people's lives, guarantee that patients of other diseases are not denied access to medical resources, and so on.

But such problems during lockdown should be solved by improving the logistics and strengthening coordination among different government departments, rather than loosening curbs in the fight against the pandemic.

 

 

Edited April 9, 2022 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

April 8, 2022
When Shanghai announced plans to lock down the entire city on March 28, most people started preparing for a long wait at home. But some butchers, grocers, and delivery drivers went the other way, leaving their homes behind to keep food moving for the city’s 25 million people. Stuck at home, with markets and grocery delivery services either shut down or overwhelmed, many Shanghai residents are spending all day trying to find a source of food or stretch out what they have. Food supply workers reached by Chen Shihuan for Sixth Tone said it was a difficult choice to keep working: it’s been nearly impossible to secure essential worker permits, so they’ve gone underground, hiding from police as well as COVID-19 and sleeping in vans, tents, and empty fast food restaurants while moving food during the day. As cases rise and enforcement gets tighter, many have stopped making deliveries, but are still stuck outdoors with no timeline to return home. — Dave Cohen, editor
They Wanted to Feed Shanghai. It Can Mean Living in a Van for Weeks
Empty restaurants, vans, and parks — food supply workers are searching for places to sleep as lockdowns separate them fr...
Chen Shihuan

 

Shopkeepers and delivery drivers are a lifeline for millions of locked-down Shanghai residents. But to keep food deliveries running, many left their homes for improvised housing in workplaces or vehicles. 
Read more: http://ow.ly/TpVM50ICS12

They Wanted to Feed Shanghai. It Can Mean Living in a Van for Weeks
Empty restaurants, vans, and parks — food supply workers are searching for places to sleep as lockdowns separate them from home.

The tent delivery driver Geng is currently sleeping in. Courtesy of Geng

 

 

[Randy W]

Vlogging From Central Quarantine
A man with mild COVID-19 symptoms filmed his routine at a  designated quarantine site in Shanghai.

https://www.facebook.com/sixthtone/videos/3093673264239715/

Edited April 10, 2022 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

Coronavirus: Shanghai’s symptomatic cases jump to a record 2,573, showing why Xi is doubling down on his zero-tolerance battle with Covid-19

• Shanghai’s total cases soared to 27,719, rewriting the daily record for the 12th time in 13 days, according to data released on Thursday
• The latest tally raised the total infections in the city of 25 million residents to 280,000, with 12,000 of them displaying symptoms of the Covid-19 disease

from the SCMP
Published: 12:34pm, 14 Apr, 2022

Volunteers in protective suits prepared to disinfect a residential compound in Huangpu district, to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Shanghai on April 14, 2022. Photo: China Daily via Reuters.
 

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All nine of the most severe cases, comprising elderly residents aged from 70 to 93 years, suffer from underlying health ailments such as cancer, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, Wu said.
Shanghai’s latest data, collected over 24 hours on Wednesday, underscored why Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan has kept China’s financial and commercial centre under a citywide lockdown since April 5. Sun, who has been overseeing Shanghai’s anti-pandemic work for more than a week, instructed all Covid-19 carriers to be transferred to quarantine sites to stop the spread of the virus.

 . . .

China’s nationwide cases increased to 29,317, mostly centred around Shanghai, according to the data released on Thursday. Guangdong province in southern China added 68 cases, 47 of which showed symptoms. Jilin province in northeastern China, near the border with North Korea, added 999 infections.

 

“Prevention and control work cannot be relaxed,” President Xi said on Wednesday during his visit to Hainan island in southern China, reaffirming the government’s zero-tolerance approach to the public health crisis, according to state news agency Xinhua.

“Virus control measures must be strictly implemented” in strict adherence with science, the president said, adding that the antivirus campaign must minimise economic and social impact. “We will win the battle against the virus if we can keep up.”

A volunteer uses a megaphone to talk to residents at a locked down apartment building in Shanghai on Tuesday, April 12, 2022. Photo: Xinhua via AP.

Edited April 14, 2022 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

China was the world’s biggest Covid-19 vaccine exporter. Not any more

• Shipments have dropped off this year and Chinese vaccines no longer make up the bulk of supplies in low- and middle-income countries
• That is partly to do with the availability of other vaccines with better efficacy data, analysts say, but it’s also because there is less demand

 

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One reason for this is the availability of other vaccines with better efficacy data than the Chinese ones, according to analysts. However, a slump in vaccine exports across the board in March also points to a new situation: developing countries now have more than enough vaccines but their vaccination rates remain relatively low.

All of this is affecting China’s vaccine diplomacy, analysts say.

 . . .

Last year, most of the Chinese vaccines went to developing countries, while mRNA vaccine makers like Pfizer and Moderna mainly supplied to wealthy nations. But in the first three months this year, Pfizer for the first time surpassed Chinese drug makers as the largest supplier to low- and lower middle-income countries, with monthly shipments of 91 million doses in January, 85.7 million in February and 46.6 million in March, UN data shows.

 

 

[Martin B]

I wonder what China's endgame is. COVID is obviously in the country, and isn't going anywhere. Even if they snuff out the virus in one city through draconian lockdowns/shutdowns, all it takes is a single infected traveler from another province and another outbreak can easily occur. Looks like Guangzhou is also heading into full lockdown mode as well. From what the data shows, vaccinating the elderly and immunocompromised is probably the lowest of the hanging fruit, not sure what the % is in China. Looks like probably at least another year before we even have a chance at going back. 

[Randy W]

Because, of course, look at the SHINY stuff.

#ChinaDailyEditorial For those who still doubt whether #China will continue to carry out reform and opening-up to the outside world, they need to look at no other place than #Hainan. #trade https://bit.ly/3jDZ9EE

from China Daily on Facebook 
https://www.facebook.com/chinadaily/posts/346349074189344

Hainan free trade port underscores nation's resolve to open up more: China Daily editorial

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For those who still doubt whether China will continue to carry out reform and opening-up to the outside world, they need to look at no other place than Hainan.

The central authorities decided to develop the island province into a pilot free trade zone in 2018, and in June 2020 unveiled a master plan to build it into a globally influential and high-level free trade port by the middle of this century.

Since then, Hainan has moved onto a fast track of high-quality and high-standard development, thanks mostly to a batch of preferential policies such as zero tariffs, duty-free shopping and easing market access for foreign investors.

As a result, its foreign trade has more than doubled from 70.28 billion yuan ($11.04 billion) in 2017 to 147.68 billion yuan in 2021; and foreign direct investment has amounted to $8.81 billion, with an annual growth rate of 79.4 percent over the past four years.

All this underscores China's resolve to continue to expand its opening-up for mutual benefits and win-win results with the rest of the world.

Which explains why President Xi Jinping has put high expectations on Hainan becoming a paradigm of reform and opening-up in the new era of China's development.

During a four-day inspection tour that concluded on Wednesday, President Xi also called for efforts to accelerate the development of Hainan into a free trade port with Chinese characteristics and global influence.