China is by far the world’s biggest COVID powder keg — and it might be on the verge of exploding.
Not since the earliest days of the pandemic has the most populous country on the planet ever reported more than about 200 coronavirus cases per day — dizzying evidence of the blunt, even brutal, effectiveness of Beijing’s “zero COVID” strategy, which requires strict mass lockdowns at the first flicker of an outbreak.
For most of the last two years, mainland China has averaged fewer than 50 cases per day. According to official numbers, no one — not one of China’s 1.4 billion residents — has died of COVID since May 16, 2020. While the virus ravaged the rest of the globe, China claimed it had basically vanished from its country of origin.
But now, tragically, that appears to be changing.
Over the last few weeks, China’s COVID curve has shot straight up, the telltale sign of an Omicron outbreak. Nationwide, new daily cases cleared 5,100 for the first time ever on Monday. Even in February 2020, when the virus first skyrocketed in Wuhan, that number officially peaked at just 3,300 per day, on average. ...
...In response, Beijing has followed its usual playbook. According to CNN, “five cities — collectively home to more than 37 million residents — are now under varying levels of lockdown,” with locals forced to remain in their homes or neighborhoods as schools, businesses, factories and public transport close and authorities conduct multiple rounds of compulsory mass testing. ....
Handled properly, a zero COVID approach can pay off. Until late last year, New Zealand essentially had eradicated the virus by closing its borders, targeting lockdowns and aggressively testing, tracing and isolating every infection it detected. Today, just 156 New Zealanders have died from the disease — total. And the country has lifted nearly all restrictions.
Yet there’s a reason New Zealand’s policy worked: It was just as aggressive about vaccinating its people as eliminating the virus. So far, more than 95% of New Zealanders over 12 have been vaccinated; more importantly, nearly 100% of elderly New Zealanders — by far the most vulnerable group — have received two or more vaccine doses. By the time the country stopped trying to eliminate the virus, after the ever-more-contagious Delta and Omicron variants made it pretty much impossible, nearly every resident at risk of severe illness or death already had the antibodies they needed to ward off the worst outcomes.
Hong Kong, however, has been a different story. The city also went with a zero COVID approach; until Omicron, it never recorded more than a handful of cases each day. Yet when Omicron finally hit, it hit hard, propelling new cases from about 100 per day on Feb. 4 to a high of more than 44,000 one month later. ...
