There is a state of emergency in China. A frenzied wave of protests has swept the country. People are taking to the streets, finally demanding an end to the country’s harsh zero-Covid strategy.
China is the latest major economy to impose ultra-strict measures. Even small corona outbreaks can lead to lockdowns or even entire cities. Still, the number of infections has risen rapidly recently – 38,421 new infections were registered on Tuesday.
Despite all the uprisings and unrest, the government remains tough. The zero Covid strategy remains. The protests are crushed. The leadership in Beijing then massively increased the police presence. According to corona experts, the government cannot simply abolish the measures anyway. A rapid opening is “counterproductive and dangerous,” Timo Ulrichs, a global health expert at Berlin’s Akkon University of Human Sciences, told the German news agency on Monday.
“The population will certainly not participate in this for much longer”
The Chinese have almost no adequate immune protection. A sudden outbreak can lead to catastrophes and many deaths. China has a low vaccination rate and another problem. There are still no mRNA vaccines approved in the country. They continue to rely on specially developed vaccines. But they don’t look particularly good and don’t last long.
That’s why these kinds of outbreaks occur regularly. According to Ulrichs, it is also wrong to just stubbornly adhere to the zero-Covid policy. This would not improve the situation. It would continue as before. Ulrichs: “The population will certainly not participate in this for much longer.”
Now the Chinese are in a dilemma
With the tough measures, the government has temporarily been able to get the virus under control. But in the meantime, the country should have been vaccinated to build up sufficient immune protection. This could have gradually relaxed the hard Corona policy.
Now the Chinese are in a dilemma. The only solution: vaccinate as much as possible with mRNA vaccines. But the government has resisted it so far. The GGD only announced on Tuesday that it wanted to vaccinate the elderly population more quickly against the corona virus and that a special working group will “further increase the vaccination rate for people over the age of 80 and for people between the ages of 60 and 79”. age”. Not enough in Ulrichs’ eyes.