How China fights COVID-19 revival

Zhao Renmi wakes up to the sound of village officials shouting that everyone should pack up and leave, without explaining where or for how long. The message spreads about a new COVID-19 outbreak, so she gathers and obeys her children.

“My heart is really upset. It’s hard to wear, ”Zhao, a short-haired woman living in the Hebei countryside, said in a video posted on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, this week. According to local reports and health officials, she was one of about 20,000 residents evacuated from 12 nearby towns as part of China’s fight against the biggest coronavirus outbreak in months.

More than 500 new cases have been found in Hebei, the industrial province around Beijing, since January 2, sparking a “wartime” response from Chinese authorities fearing the virus would spread ahead of the upcoming Spring Festival, when hundreds of millions of Chinese across the country land cross. country to go home every year.

The jump in infections comes as a World Health Organization mission investigating the origins of the pandemic is expected to arrive on Thursday. Last week, Beijing found an embarrassment when Beijing announced on the day that several members of the team had already begun their travels to China that their visas had not been approved, leading to the delay of WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus caused.

China has been sensitive to criticism from the US and other countries that it has not done enough to prevent the virus from spreading beyond its borders one year ago. It is unclear what access the WTO team will have to assess the origin of the pandemic. Most medical experts believe that it was transmitted by an animal in a food market in Wuhan, but others believe that it may have originated in a laboratory.

Dr. Dale Fisher, an infectious disease specialist based in Singapore and a member of an earlier WTO mission to China, told Reuters on Tuesday that expectations were “very low” that the medical team would receive significant answers.

About 18 million residents of the capital of Hebei, Shijiazhuang, and the nearby city of Xingtai have been banned from leaving, public transport has been stopped, mass tests are underway and stay-at-home orders are being implemented in the strictest exclusion since Wuhan was sequestered in early 2020. .

In the rural areas around Shijiazhuang where many of the cases were found in the most recent outbreak, villagers were evacuated. On Douyin, users posted videos of villagers lined up in winter coats with suitcases, plastic bags and children on tow, who were on board quarantine red buses.

Zhao turned her camera to show a packed backpack, two fertilizer bags full of clothes and her children’s belongings, and steamed sandwiches to eat. “I do not understand. I feel like a refugee, ”she said. ‘But I think we are following the arrangements of the country. If they want us to move, we move. ”

Such acceptance of government orders helped China curb the pandemic and launch its economy far ahead of much of the world. Despite allegations that the authorities underestimated the cases and mismanaged the initial outbreak of last year, the state’s extensive restrictions and extensive control have since kept the total number of cases below 98,000, with 4,793 deaths, as reported by the Johns Hopkins University reported.

In the latest outbreak, there has been one death, the first such death toll since May 17. Previous “wartime” responses to small outbreaks through 2020 have quickly controlled the virus and enabled a rapid return to work, school, travel and social gatherings.

However, the same insistence on control hampered research into the origins of the pandemic and silenced Chinese voices challenging the government’s positive story. In late December, a former lawyer named Zhang Zhan was sentenced to four years in prison for recording videos in Wuhan of overcrowded hospitals, frightened residents and her own questions about government repression by whistleblowers.

Zhang is one of at least four Chinese video bloggers, including another lawyer and a former CCTV host, who disappeared from Wuhan last year when he posted videos on the ground.

Lu Qiang, party secretary of Xiaoguozhuang village, one of the first places where the outbreak began in Shijiazhuang, told Chinese business newspaper Yicai that it took about ten days to evacuate all 4,000 villagers. It was not easy to convince the villagers, Lu said in the report, which was removed from the internet a few hours after it was published on Tuesday.

Many residents have asked why they should move if quarantine places are not being prepared. Why move the whole town instead of just positive cases? Why could they not be quarantined at home? Lu spoke one morning in the village broadcasting system, saying: ‘If we leave, we will feel better, and so will others. It is the right thing to do. ”

The operation was haphazard and quarantine conditions undesirable, although it eventually improved, a Xiaoguozhuang villager said in the report. Large buses transported villagers in groups of 50 to 60 to quarantine sites where there were often no blankets or pillows.

At least one bus left its passengers on board overnight because there were no quarantine seats available. The bus door remained open despite the temperature of 1.5 degrees, for fear that the heat transfer would increase the virus transmission, the report said.

Similar complaints have been raised online about a school being used for quarantine in Xingtai. People who were taken there for quarantine posted videos on the social media platform Weibo of dirty bathrooms and dormitories and photos of people crowding to get water, complaining that there is no social distance or hygiene.

“It’s not quarantined, it’s concentration,” wrote one user. Students, meanwhile, have argued that they have not been informed that their dormitories will be requested and that their personal items are still inside.

The Xingtai authorities have issued a statement acknowledging the shortcomings in quarantine and promising improvements. Some of the Weibo posts were then removed.

Contact tracking data released by authorities, showed that many of the initial Hebei cases were related to town weddings, including one in a hotel across from Shijiazhuang Airport. Some residents of Xiaoguozhuang allegedly also worked as housekeepers or baggage handlers at that airport, one of the designated gateways for international travelers.

Authorities said there was no link between the Hebei outbreak and a more contagious strain of coronavirus from the UK. But new strains similar to those found in the United Kingdom and South Africa have been discovered in several other provinces.

Four additional cities and provinces in Hebei announced home orders for seven days on Tuesday. A country in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang was also closed on Tuesday due to 20 asymptomatic cases. Some districts in Beijing are also subject to movement restrictions.

Kevin Meng, an apartment rental agent who works in Beijing but lives on the outskirts of the city in Hebei, said he had not been able to gain access to Beijing for the past few days, although he tested negative for the virus.

Meng, 33, said he was stopped at a checkpoint because he was registered as a resident of Xingtai, although he had not visited recently. Authorities consider Xingtai a hotspot because 26 cases of local transmission have been found this month.

Meng’s parents were locked up in their village in Xingtai, according to them, unable to go outside their homes, while the village leaders called and shouted at anyone who ventured outside. “It’s basically the same as last year,” he said.

A Shijiazhuang High School student, Zizy Li, told The Times that she was locked up on her campus. The heat is not working well, and only three teachers were with her and other students. The students had no cell phones and lived according to a fixed schedule, got up at 06:00, went to bed at 22:30 and studied every day without weekends.

“The government has given notice that no one can move for unnecessary reasons. “Even if your family member dies, you can not move,” Li said. Some students cry, homesick, and expect to be locked up for at least two weeks and possibly even after the Spring Festival. But Li said she was fine, aside from tensions over an upcoming big exam she would have to quarantine.

Lucy Qin, 38, an insurance agent who lives in the Chang’an district in Shijiazhuang, said the exclusionary conditions vary among residences. Some people were not allowed to leave their buildings, but she was able to walk within the fenced community. There was a rush to buy groceries and anxiety about shortages, she said, but by the fourth day of closing, they had got everything they needed.

“I feel calm,” she said. “I think it should be within the government’s control.”

Ziyu Yang of The Times’ Beijing bureau contributed to this report.