Chinese cities, factories tell people with Covid-19 to go back to work

BEIJING – Chinese workers with mild Covid-19 symptoms are being told to go back to work in some cities, evidence of a complete reversal in the way the virus is being viewed as officials seek to limit the economic impact of an explosion in cases while the country reopens.

Government workers in the western metropolis of Chongqing were told to continue working if they were asymptomatic or experiencing mild Covid-19 symptoms, the authorities said over the weekend.

Officials in Zhejiang, a manufacturing hub on China’s east coast, and a city in the nearby province of Anhui, also allowed Covid-19-positive people to return to work this week, according to local media reports.

The moves come just weeks after the country abruptly abandoned its stringent zero-Covid regime, plunging headlong into reopening despite lagging vaccination rates and colder weather.

The shift has been accompanied by a wave of infections in major urban centres, with Beijing bearing the initial brunt of what experts predict will be a tsunami of Covid-19 cases across the vast nation.

Still, the government’s plan seems to be to weather the initial reopening wave quickly, and get the economy – hobbled by months of crippling lockdowns, mandatory quarantines and testing – back to consistent growth. 

Allowing Covid-19-positive people to return to work, especially in factories, will no doubt fuel the spread. Yet, some companies are willing to run that gauntlet, especially if their younger workforces do not get too sick. 

Most of the front-line workers at Mr Peter Yu’s factory that makes vehicles in Hubei province in central China are still working – even with mild Covid-19 symptoms. The employees are paid by the number of products they make, he said, so there is an incentive to keep working even if they are infected.

Given that China has largely dismantled its once ubiquitous polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing system, the company knows if workers are Covid-19 positive only if they inform the firm about it.

“If they self-report, we will recommend they stay at home and recover. But the real situation is that many workers are infected, they don’t have serious symptoms, they choose to continue to work and not report their cases,” said Mr Yu.

It contrasts with the more cautious approach deployed in other countries as they shifted from eliminating Covid-19 to living with it. Most places had rules in place around when a Covid-19-positive person – or anyone even exposed to the virus – could go out in public and enter workplaces. Those curbs were aimed at flattening the curve and minimising the hit to hospitals as the virus circulated.

China has had to build makeshift fever clinics in Beijing after the first days of wider spread saw hospitals overwhelmed with infected people.

Officials have since focused on downplaying the severity of Covid-19 and telling people to ride it out at home if they can – a total about-turn from how the virus was portrayed in China over the past three years. 

Now, with the initial case explosion appearing to ease off, Beijing is telling workers they do not need to prove they are negative to return to the workplace, as long as they have done a week of home isolation. 

Other businesses in China are still trying to limit spread within their factories, with crucial year-end production targets in sight.

German carmaker Volkswagen is asking Covid-19-free workers to work longer hours at one of its factories in southern China, with a raft of employees out sick with Covid-19. 

Companies such as Apple’s supplier, Foxconn Technology, and carmaker Geely are keeping their workers in closed loops as the Covid-19 wave spreads. The systems see employees confined to the factory campus and tested regularly to keep the virus out.

Reopening has been accompanied by staff shortages and reduced output for businesses in other parts of the world, and the expectation is that China will have a similar experience, at a much greater scale, as it scraps its zero-Covid policy. Mass absenteeism and delays in the world’s second-largest economy could have significant implications for supply chains and global growth. 

Encouraging mild or asymptomatic cases to work may help mute that impact to some extent, but would also supercharge the outbreak – leading to more cases, and likely deaths. Bloomberg