Xi Jinping's Triumph in Leadership

"Until Omicron, I actually thought a COVID-zero approach could be plausible. [But] it's just so insidious, it can just spread so quickly."

"I feel it's kind of like a losing battle. You could do it for a week or two ... then it's going to come back again."

"I just don't know how China will be able o avoid what happened in Hong Kong, write large."

"If everyone stays home, the outbreak will get snuffed out. But ... even if Shanghai can snuff out this particular outbreak, there's going to be more introduction of it, because it's circulating everywhere else in the world."

Dr.Jeff Kwong, public-health professor, University of Toronto

"What happens to your pet if you test positive remains an unsettling grey area with no clear solution."

"Horror stories circulate online about pets being left behind and one was recently killed with a shovel by a person in a haz-mat suit."

CNN journalist David Culver, Shanghai

One clip shows a policeman in a hazmat suit removing a protester from the scene  BBC

 

CNN journalist Culver, as a resident of Shanghai, has his own very personal fears aside from his writing about regular morning marches of neighbourhood residents to designated areas where they are tested by health officials wearing haz-mat suits. Should they test positive they are immediately sequestered, not permitted to return home and must go into isolation. If they have pets at home the pets are confiscated and put to death. David Culver has nightmares of testing positive, worried about abandoning his dog, as he would be forced into quarantine.

 

Shanghai's 25-million residents have been cooped into lockdown for weeks, unable to leave their homes except for COVID testing, and living with food shortages caused by the enforced total lockdown. A lockdown originally meant to last a few days, but that has been ongoing now for weeks with no indication how long it may last, as long as COVID-positive cases continue to present and authorities continue to react with draconian methods of isolation. The situation led to people shouting in desperation from open windows in their apartments and from balconies.

 

People wearing personal protective equipment transfer food supplies and necessities for local residents during a COVID-19 lockdown in Shanghai, April 5, 2022. Photo by AFP via Getty Images

 

The protests spurred officials to seek a solution to the angry social protests, including media posts in a country not known to tolerate dissent. The solution? Drones, circulating in neighbourhoods with very specific messages: "Please comply with COVID restrictions. Control your soul's thirst for freedom. Do not open your windows and sing", the female voice instructs.

Children separated from their parents when found to be COVID-positive. This is a reflection of China's   COVID-zero policy meant to completely eradicate, not merely control SARS-CoV-2. The virus is not responding positively to that goal, however, and the method finds no wide public acceptance. Chinese health authorities who subscribe to the COVID-zero manoeuvres insisting on complete lockdown to effectively beat virus transmission, appear not to have reckoned with the high transmissibility of the Omicron strain.

 

Staff members organize mass food orders from locked down Shanghai residents. Photo: Reuters

"Judging from how this pandemic is being handled by different leaderships and systems ... [we can] clearly see who has done better", China's President Xi Jinping has boasted in the past. And it did realize a good measure of success with pop-up cases here and there and swift responses in fragmented areas, quickly contained. Until Omicron arrived and infections began reaching into the stratosphere, as much as 15,000 daily of late. Beijing's firm orders for Shanghai's total lockdown reflected its wish to avoid the disaster in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong's own COVID-zero achievements were blown to smithereens when three million people were infected and mass deaths occurred. In both areas low vaccination rates among people aged 80 and over and lack of access to mRNA vaccines seem partly to blame. That the most vulnerable age group in the populations have not been vaccinated seems like an an avoidable Achilles heel that should not have gone unaddressed. China's home-grown vaccines have a relatively low efficacy rate; somewhere around 50% and less, compared to the mRNA vaccines.

Locked into their homes the population has been unable to work, attend school, shop, attend medical appointments. The government plan to supply people with food deliveries has overburdened commercial delivery services, the result of which has been that a great many people face starvation, deprived of food access. Clearly, China's approach to stifling the virus that originated in Wuhan, China and went on speedily to infect the global population, has been nothing to celebrate as a success.

Workers in protective suits disinfect an old residential area under lockdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic, in Shanghai on April 15.  ALY SONG/Reuters