The images bring back painful memories in China: entire cities confined, villages barricaded, canceled flights, long queues to test millions of inhabitants … On Wednesday August 4, the country even announced a tightening of the conditions of exit from the territory. However, he is far from reliving the disaster of the very first months of the Covid-19 epidemic: since the discovery of an outbreak in Nanjing on July 21, China has recorded around 600 cases of local transmission. This is the highest figure since the end of the first wave for China, in April 2020. But, for the moment, no serious cases have been reported: it is the paradox, these particularly strict measures are applied when the threat is lower. Thanks to a well-underway vaccination campaign, with 1.68 billion doses administered or about 60% of the population covered, most of the cases detected in recent weeks are mild. What to pose the question, in the medium term, of the approach of zero tolerance vis-a-vis the virus.
For now, the reverse is happening. Visiting Nanjing, Deputy Prime Minister Sun Chunlan deplored a “Ideological laxity” at the origin of the new leaks in the prevention system, and urged: “We cannot relax for a single moment. “ In the capital of Henan, Zhengzhou, the director of the city’s health commission, was fired following the appearance of a small outbreak linked to an airport. Entire cities, like Yangzhou, 1.5 million inhabitants, are confined as at the worst hours of the first wave: in this city of Jiangsu where cases have appeared in playrooms frequented by elderly, more vulnerable people, only one person per household is allowed to go out to shop.
“Health wall”
As elsewhere in the world, it is the Delta variant that has slipped into the interstices of the Chinese “health wall”. Built after the first wave, it is based first of all on the virtual closure of borders: visas are issued in small quantities and travelers subject to two to three weeks of quarantine in specific hotels. In the country, then, the population is traced thanks to big data, and when an outbreak emerges, the reactivity is immediate: in the least case, the local authorities take drastic measures, which are not released until a few weeks after the last transmission. . So far, the system has worked relatively well. Infections have indeed taken place in the context of the care of travelers arriving from abroad and at China’s most porous borders, with Russia, to the north, or with Burma, to the south, for example, but each time they have been contained.
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