Once again, Covid-19 is casting a negative spotlight on China. After spending plenty of political capital enforcing the so-called ‘zero-Covid’ policy of suppressing the pandemic within local communities, The Chinese government has taken steps in recent weeks to abruptly end restrictions around testing, quarantine, and traveling after protests against that policy took place in major cities and made global headlines. China, just like the rest of the world, has now belatedly opted to learn to live with the virus.
Time will tell how the sudden loosening of restrictions will play out over 2023 – right now, there are reports in Western media noting a massive spike in Covid-19 infections in China. This is to be expected after the opening up, but it can cause a social crisis if the elderly, who are more vulnerable and relatively less immunized, became victims in large numbers. Outside China, the world is getting jittery by the day, with flashbacks of the early days of the pandemic that started exactly three years ago. It’s eerily familiar!
The international concerns are that China’s rising Covid-19 cases amid foreign travel relaxations will increase infections abroad. There are also apprehensions around data-sharing by Chinese authorities on actual case counts and sub-variants. There is the worry that the virus causing havoc within China might lead to the emergence of a new, more lethal variant that is then transported abroad. The growing wariness is causing countries in Asia, Europe, and the Americas to impose testing and other restrictions on travelers from China.
Thus far, the concerns are kept from growing wild by the fact that the two dominant Omicron sub-variants in China (BF.7 and BA.5.2.) are already subdued in the West amidst high vaccination rates. Besides, health researchers in China are now reportedly sharing a growing number of virus genome-sequencing data with their global peers. Active data-sharing is key to spotting new sub-variants, providing early warnings, and commencing clinical processes and interventions in time to contain the spread of deadly sub-variants.
With some luck, the world may be able to go through the months ahead as China’s transition to co-exist with the virus takes hold. If luck is in short supply, the early pandemic experience suggests that countries won’t likely be caught off-guard like they were in early 2020. While many governments (like Pakistan) have downgraded their pandemic-dealing capabilities after achieving virus-reduction and significant vaccination rates, it is not difficult to ramp up the capacity and dust off the pandemic-handling playbook.
That said, a renewed pandemic will pose serious public health and economic threats to the world. If China’s great opening up went awry, it would have to close things down again, thus having a ripple effect across economies that depend on Chinese production. Already, the world is fighting decades-high inflation. Under President Biden, the US may try to improve global pandemic coordination, but ‘de-coupling’ and Russia-related tensions with China may hamper progress. Some stressful few months lie ahead.
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