With Omicron or Delta outbreaks already in multiple provinces, scientists say next week’s Winter Olympics will present a major test of China’s zero-tolerance approach.
. “It is not the right time to reopen,” says Chen Tianmu, an epidemiologist at Xiamen University.
Millions-strong cities have implemented strict lockdowns and introduced rounds of mass testing. Residents have had to make do with intermittent deliveries of food and medicines. In Xi’an in December, the government even banned all traffic and cancelled flights. But a highly vaccinated population is unlikely to be a barrier against Omicron’s spread. The relative inefficacy of China’s vaccines at preventing infections, combined with Omicron’s increased transmissibility, will make it harder for China to maintain its zero-COVID approach, says Yanzhong Huang, who studies global health in China at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City.
And international athletes attending the Olympics will be confined to a ‘bubble’, flying in on chartered flights, travelling from their hotels to sports venues in dedicated vehicles, and being subjected to daily testing. Tickets will not be sold for events, and the few spectators who are allowed to attend will be instructed not to shout or cheer. In terms of precautionary measures, it’s probably “the most stringent Olympics in history”, says Huang.
Cowling argues that China should time the ramp-up of its booster campaign as close to the nation’s reopening as possible, to account for waning immunity. “Vaccines are not so critical for maintaining zero-COVID but are really critical for an exit from zero-COVID,” he says. In December 2020, Shanghai-based pharmaceutical company Fosun Pharma and biotechnology company BioNTech, based in Mainz, Germany, announced that they had collaborated to produce an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine and to supply doses to China. However, the vaccine has not yet been approved by regulators. If it is, it would be the first internationally developed vaccine to be approved in mainland China.
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