Hosting the Olympic Games is a daunting challenge in any given year. Another global pandemic, and the logistics of welcoming world athletes in while stopping the virus, get complicated quickly. But China believes that its positive stance against COVID-19 is up to the task. While the rest of the world is struggling to keep up with the virus, China’s strategy is to stay ahead of it. With the so-called “action zero-COVID-19“Policy, health officials try to contain any new cases by rapidly testing, contact tracing, isolating, and establishing lockdowns to prevent the spread of the virus.
China’s plan to crush COVID-19 in Beijing Olympics also harsh. If it works, the country’s approach could become a leading example of a way to learn to live with SARS-CoV-2: detect new cases and stamp them out as quickly as possible. If not, this year’s Olympics could be a sobering lesson in trying to catch up with a virus as adaptable as this one has proven to be.
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China has used a “no COVID” approach for the past two years with impressive results – even at the expense of its citizens. A month before the Olympics were scheduled to begin, government officials issued restrictions on the 14 million people living in the port city of Tianjin after a spate of 20 cases broke out. In areas near where infections have occurred, people are confined to their homes, while in remote areas, people are subject to the same restrictions as staying at home (except for one person per person). households are allowed to go grocery shopping every other day) or have to stay in their vicinity. On January 17, after an office worker in Beijing tested positive for new Omicron variant, the entire building was suddenly locked with the staff still inside. Government officials have prepared beds and food for the stranded workers, who will likely only be allowed to leave after testing negative after a specified period of time. The home of the office worker who tested positive has also been cordoned off, and the neighbors have been tested.
While the measures may seem extreme, they appear to be effective, at least according to the latest government COVID-19 document, Political and public health leaders have criticized to downplay the actual impact of the pandemic. Jeremy Luban, a professor at the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine, said: “If accurate, the number of reported cases in China is much lower than what we have in the US. Currently, China has reported just over 5,000 cases in the past month, compared with more than 15 million in the US. The Chinese concept even precedes it: don’t take the curve”.
The graph of China’s number of new infections over the past year is in stark contrast to that of the US. The number of people stabilized at a relatively low rate during the summer when more people were vaccinated, but has increased steadily over the past few months due to Omicron disease, reaching a pandemic high in January 2022.
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Much of China’s success in eradicating SARS-CoV-2 can be traced back to its strict travel restrictions into the country and strict quarantine rules that require any travelers from the country. Outsiders — those who have been asked to test negative before boarding — must stay in a quarantine hotel for 14 days to make sure they don’t contain the infection. This even applies to Chinese nationals returning home from abroad. Athletes, coaches, support staff and media arrive at the Olympics must be vaccinated To avoid such quarantines, Chinese officials are hedging all risks with a policy of intensive testing and semi-isolation that will separate Olympic visitors from local residents. All Game participants will be required to test negative 72 hours before they board their flight to Beijing and will be tested using the worm pick your nose and throat when they arrive at the airport. They will then be taken directly to their hotel, where they are supposed to stay until informed that their test result is negative and they can leave.
If they are negative, then athletes, coaches, media and other staff members will be in a false bubble for the duration of their time. They can only use specialized transportation and dine at designated restaurants. People will be tested daily and are expected to be isolated immediately if they test positive; no one can be quarantined until they test negative twice with 24 hours in between. However, these measures were not effective. For example, it is unclear whether local volunteers and support staff for the Olympics — bus drivers, food service workers, health care workers performing tests — will also be required. in the bubble or whether they are allowed to return home every evening. “The bigger the bubble, the more chance you have of going wrong,” said Tara Kirk Sell, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “And it’s even harder when you have something as transmittable as Omicron.”
Chinese officials are under great threat, both politically and from a public health perspective. Their management of the pandemic will certainly be compared to the way The Japanese government’s handling of the Summer Olympics just six months ago, of which 865 cases were reported linked to the Olympics. If major outbreaks occur in the run-up to the Olympics, it will be public evidence that a zero-tolerance approach, even a dynamic one, is not the most effective way to control it. control transmission.
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Even if China’s COVID-free policy succeeds in keeping Olympic visitors safe, this approach has the potential to have serious long-term effects on the entire population, including including lower levels of immunity to the virus. Once the lockdowns are finally lifted, people may still be susceptible to infection and – more worryingly – serious illness. While 87% of China’s population is vaccinated, this high rate may not offer as much protection as it suggests; Recent studies show that one of the most commonly used vaccines developed by China did not produce enough antibodies to neutralize the Omicron variant in laboratory studies.
As a result, some experts predict that achieving herd immunity – in which most of the population is protected, by vaccination or already infected with COVID-19 – will be more elusive for China. many other countries. Because of Omicrons tend to cause less serious illness in vaccinated people, some experts say it could help some populations it’s widely known for to gain herd immunity more quickly and – hopefully – with less illness and death compared to previous variants. From that point of view, killing the virus wherever it breaks out can provide a temporary (though expensive and laborious) solution, but not necessarily a long-term solution. Castle. In a recent report, risk assessment firm Eurasia Group, that the president writes a column for TIME, warned that “Chinese policy will not prevent infections, leading to larger outbreaks, which in turn require more stringent containment.”
Omicron’s ability to spread quickly and effectively will pose a challenge to China that no other Olympic host country has faced. With such a high level of transmission, even rigorous testing can miss outbreaks. “Omicron is the ultimate challenge for any case-free program,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Studies show that Delta, has circulated in Tokyo Olympics last summer, was twice as infectious as previous variants — and Omicron was up to four times more infectious than Delta. While vaccines can protect against serious illness, they cannot completely prevent people from becoming infected, as the growing number of breakthrough infections shows. Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, a global health research organization, said: “I’m not sure we’ll ever get to the COVID-19 point of zero. “I would doubt that. SARS-CoV-2 will not go away; when it’s in this population and so well adapted to humanity, why is it gone? The best hope is that it changes over time, as more people develop immunity, becoming the flu of the 21st century.”
Other countries that have adopted zero COVID strategies, including Australia and New Zealand, were forced to abandon them during the summer and autumn. The Delta variant squashed these countries’ efforts to keep cases up to date, and lockdowns became socially intolerable and detrimental to people’s mental health. Accepting that it may not be possible to rule out SARS-CoV-2, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said it was time to “get out of the cave”. His admission acknowledges that although vaccines provide protection, they cannot prevent people from becoming infected, so cases are inevitable. The aim is to prevent those infected from becoming seriously ill or needing hospitalization.
The United States, knowingly or inaction, never adopted a fortress mentality, relying instead on vaccinating as much of the population as quickly as possible and, more recently, encouraging more widely tested so active people can take appropriate safety precautions and avoid interactions in public places. While cases have skyrocketed in the US since Omicron emerged, some models predict that the combination of immunity from the shots and natural infections will eventually produce a virus. formidable enough to significantly reduce the damage caused by COVID-19 outbreaks in more vulnerable people who have not been vaccinated or have weakened immune systems – at least that is the hope.
“Countries will have to accept a period of high community transmission,” says Farrar. “And I think that’s the path that China will eventually have to go through.”
For now, China’s aggressive approach to COVID-19 could put the country in a strong position to safely host the Games as expected. But ultimately how the virus will behave there during the Olympics — and after them — will be the part of the competition that everyone watches most closely.
