Outbreaks in China prompt lockdowns and fears of more economic woes

Just days after China’s economy reported its worst quarterly performance in more than two years, officials have shown no sign of abandoning the zero-COVID policy that has upended social and economic life in the country.

New York Times

July 19, 2022 / 22:37 IST

China has seen multiple outbreaks despite its strict zero Covid policy (Image: AP)

More than a dozen Chinese cities are grappling with a spate of COVID-19 outbreaks driven by omicron subvariants, prompting widespread lockdowns and mass quarantines of millions of people that could worsen China’s slumping economy.

Just days after China’s economy reported its worst quarterly performance in more than two years, officials have shown no sign of abandoning the zero-COVID policy that has upended social and economic life in the country. The outbreaks have been relatively small, at most a few hundred cases in most places. But Chinese officials, acting on orders from the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, are pulling out all the stops to stamp out outbreaks soon after they emerge.

About 264 million people in 41 cities are currently under full or partial lockdowns or living under other measures, analysts at Nomura, the Japanese bank, wrote in a note Monday. Last week, the figure was about 247 million in 31 cities, they said.

On Tuesday, China’s National Health Commission reported 699 new cases of domestically transmitted infections, including cases in Beijing, the capital. About a third were in the western province of Gansu, where authorities in the provincial capital, Lanzhou, extended a temporary lockdown for some of the 4 million residents.

Experts say that China’s zero-COVID policy will be increasingly difficult to maintain as newer coronavirus variants become more transmissible. China has detected at least 10 different omicron subvariants since the northern city of Xi’an first reported cases of the BA.5 subvariant on July 6, according to Yicai, a financial news website backed by the Chinese government.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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