[Opinion] China’s Covid-Zero Strategy Amid Disney Fireworks at Closed Theme Park
DATE:  Nov 02 2021
/ SOURCE:  Yicai
[Opinion] China’s Covid-Zero Strategy Amid Disney Fireworks at Closed Theme Park [Opinion] China’s Covid-Zero Strategy Amid Disney Fireworks at Closed Theme Park

(Yicai Global) Nov. 2 -- Shanghai Disneyland's regular fireworks show glowed in the skies as scheduled in the world's largest theme park on Halloween evening. And under the beautiful fireworks a theme park was closed, and more than 30,000 visitors took nucleic acid tests after a single Covid-19 case was confirmed.

An official epidemic prevention expert praised this as "humanity's calmness in the face of disasters and confidence in the future."

China has been adopting the strictest Covid-zero policy since the Covid-19 outbreak. The country locks down entire cities even if one infected person is found, and runs four or more rounds of nucleic acid tests until no one is infected.

The strict management has made China the world's first economy to recover, and helped it maintain rapid gross domestic product growth. Its economy rose 9.8 percent in the first three quarters of this year, according to the latest National Bureau of Statistics data. This surely serves as the most favorable evidence for the country to continue such extreme policies.

The nation's elimination strategy has been challenged with the spread of the Delta and other new variants of the virus. China has seen new local infections in more than 11 provinces and regions since last month, making it increasingly difficult and costly to stick to the Covid-zero strategy. However, the government has shown no signs of abandoning this practice.

The huge disparity in medical resources has led to the strongest official resistance to the theory of living with Covid-19, as the healthcare system in most areas of China cannot deal with a concentrated outbreak of the virus. The only result will be the paralysis of the entire region's medical system, which neither the central nor local governments can afford.

Though China has invested significant resources in its huge population, with national health expenditure exceeding CNY7 trillion (USD1.1 trillion) last year, it had only 2.9 general practitioners per 10,000 people last year, a figure that is not high in the global context, per data from the National Health Commission last year.

More importantly, there is still an imbalance in medical resources in the country.

Beijing, for example, has 4.92 certified doctors per 1,000 persons, the highest nationwide. Central China as a whole, however, has only 2.41 certified doctors per 1,000 persons, including Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, where the Covid-19 outbreak was first detected.

It's not just the government, even ordinary Chinese seem to understand all this. People are more concerned about the collapse of the whole medical system due to rising infections than the loss of freedom.

And, so visitors to Disneyland were not upset as they waited for nucleic acid testing at the closed theme park while enjoying the fireworks with smiles on their faces.

By 3 a.m. Monday, all tests were completed and by 8 a.m., testing results of 33,863 relevant personnel who have been to Shanghai Disneyland and Disneytown on October 30 and 31 all came back negative. Results of 920 object and environment samples were also negative. All relevant sites have been fully disinfected.

Editor: Peter Thomas

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Keywords:   Shanghai Disneyland,Covid-19,Covid-zero Policy,Medical System
Zhou XinZhou XinZhou Xin is one of China’s most distinguished journalists, formerly one of the founders of Yicai Global; Chief Hong Kong correspondent for Shanghai TV; a business editor with CBN, and associate editor-in-chief of Caixin Media.