China announced on Friday March 11 that it was going to introduce, for the first time, the use of rapid antigen tests for Covid-19. The action comes as the country is experiencing a spike in cases to their highest level in two years due to the Omicron variant.
The National Health Commission clarified that these self-test kits would be available for purchase for hospitals and citizens from “retail pharmacies, online sales platforms and other channels”.
China has also confined the nine million inhabitants of Changchun (Northeast) and closed schools in Shanghai to curb contamination. Only one person per household is now allowed to go out, once every two days to ensure supplies.
But the strict containment measures weigh on daily life and on the economy.
A strategy about to be reviewed?
According to Zeng Guang, a Chinese scientist, the country should eventually seek to live with the virus and could abandon its so-called zero Covid strategy “in the near future”.
Indeed, very few Chinese have been infected and their collective immunity comes almost entirely from domestically manufactured vaccines, noted Zeng Guang. A situation that makes China is weakened compared to the West.
However, the authorities did not allow the possibility of abandoning zero Covid during the annual session of Parliament which ended on March 11. “We must constantly refine measures against the epidemic,” confirmed Prime Minister Li Keqiang, during a speech to deputies on March 5.
Municipal authorities have tried in recent months to impose targeted measures, imposing strict confinements only in a few neighborhoods or in places where cases have been recorded.