China’s rapid Covid-19 reversal sparks whiplash as cases surge

BEIJING – Covid-19 is rapidly spreading through Chinese households and offices, especially in the capital, after

the country’s pandemic rules were unexpectedly unwound last week.

It has sparked chaos on the ground, straining the medical system and rendering official numbers – that show infections at the lowest in a month – meaningless.

Scenes of disruption are most visible in Beijing, where anecdotal evidence suggest the caseload is many times the government’s tally of 1,133 for Sunday.

People queued on Monday outside fever clinics at China’s hospitals to check if they had Covid-19. There were also long lines of people waiting to at hospitals to find medicine.

Delivery services have been interrupted as couriers become sick. 

State media is urging people not to call Beijing’s emergency medical hotline unless they are severely ill, cautioning that an influx of requests for help is preventing those in critical need of assistance from getting through. 

The country is experiencing a

short-term shortage of Covid-19 antigen test kits,

mainly affected by rising demand and prices, multiple industry insiders told Yicai Global. The insiders said it will likely take two months for the production capacity to peak and meet high demand.

Doctors and nurses at a large hospital in downtown Beijing have been summoned back to work from holiday, according to a medical worker, and those in at least one hospital have been asked to keep reporting for duty even if they’ve caught Covid-19, if their symptoms are mild, said another. The healthcare workers asked not to be identified as they’re not authorised to speak publicly. 

Even as the strain builds, the government’s Covid-19 control infrastructure continues to be dismantled at a rapid pace. In the latest move, a national mobile app that was previously used to track people’s travel history will be scrapped from Tuesday. 

The rapid reversal after three years of Covid Zero comes as sub-zero temperatures enables the virus to race through the population and as

China’s elderly population remains under-vaccinated,

raising concerns that the country’s pivot has come too quickly and with too little preparation.

Yet it’s unclear if the government is willing to disclose the true picture of its outbreak: Officially, China has not reported any Covid fatalities since the pivot began, and critical cases, which the National Health Commission reports every day, were at the low level of 141 for Sunday. 

The about-turn in China has upended economists’ and investors’ expectations, complicating estimates for how its policy changes will affect economic growth. 

“The speed of changes on the ground has surprised many, including us,” Goldman Sachs Group chief China economist Hui Shan wrote in a note on Sunday. “Not even a month ago, official outlets were still emphasising that ‘20 measures’ were about optimizing the implementation of dynamic zero-Covid policy, rather than abandoning it.

“A few short weeks later, many controls are removed, and the virus seems to be spreading quickly among the population.”

Signs that the virus was rampaging through communities were widespread in cities such as Beijing and Wuhan.

“Please protect yourself,” the management of a condominium in the capital’s Dongcheng district urged residents on Sunday, adding that almost all its staff had been infected.

“Try as much as you can not to go out ...,” it said on messaging app WeChat. “Be the first person to take responsibility for your own health, let’s face this together.” Bloomberg, REUTERS