Following several days of rumours that the government was considering changing its “zero-COVID” strategy, which has slowed economic growth and disrupted daily life, Chinese health officials offered no sign on Saturday of any relaxation of COVID-19 restrictions.
At a press conference, the officials vowed to “unwaveringly” adhere to the strategy, which aims to prevent cases from entering the nation and contain outbreaks as soon as they are discovered.
The news was expected, and it doesn’t rule out the chance that talks are still going on behind closed doors. However, there has been no formal confirmation of the talks, and the majority of analysts think any changes will be incremental and won’t amount to much easing until sometime in the following year.
Anyone entering China must spend seven to ten days in quarantine at a licenced hotel. To satisfy a requirement for a negative result within the last 72 hours to access office buildings, shopping centres, restaurants, parks, and other public locations, people in the country queue up multiple times per week to receive a virus test at outdoor booths.
The rigorous execution of the zero-COVID policy has drawn criticism in several cities, according to National Health Commission official Tuo Jia, who stated that local authorities must strike a balance between epidemic prevention and economic development.
“Prevention and control must be carried out firmly, decisively, scientifically, and accurately, and firmly clean up and stop all sorts of simplification, a one-size-fits-all approach, and excessive local measures,” she said.
Travel restrictions and lockdowns are still being imposed as a result of scattered breakouts across the nation. China revealed on Saturday that 3,500 additional cases had been found the day before, including 3,000 people who tested positive despite not having any COVID-19 symptoms.
In order to perform mass testing on its 1.8 million inhabitants, Haizhu district in the southeast Chinese city of Guangzhou has cancelled bus and subway service for three days and asked everyone to stay at home. Each day, one person from each household may leave the home to go grocery shopping.
Additionally, there are restrictions in place in some areas of the northern Inner Mongolia region and the western Xinjiang province, where the regional capital of Urumqi on Saturday declared 43 new high-risk locations.
Wang Guiqiang, director of the infectious disease department at Peking University First Hospital, told the news conference that the vaccination rate for people above 80 years old needs to be raised. China does not have a vaccine mandate.
90% of the population, including 86% of those over 60, are fully immunised, according to a health official, who did not give a figure for those over 80.
During a one-day visit to Beijing on Friday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz informed reporters that China has approved the German-developed Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for foreigners and expressed his hope that its usage will be extended to the Chinese public.
When the approval would arrive was unclear. So far, China has only authorised domestic vaccines, which often use an older technology and are less successful at stopping the spread of disease than the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.