Recently, there has been a sporadic resurgence of Covid-19 cases in many parts of China, but local authorities have taken proper measures and have been flexible in their way of addressing them. For example, some communities have conducted targeted lockdowns — even for specific buildings, greatly relieving the impact on society.
After nearly two years of fighting Covid-19, a well-established system has been built, ranging from cutting off the source and strictly investigating close contacts to efficient nucleic acid testing. Meanwhile, companies and the public have become familiar with this system after several rounds and have spared no effort in finding the best solutions to balance pandemic prevention and carrying out normal work and life.
However, amid the latest round of outbreaks, some new and unexpected measures have been also taken.
After two crew members were determined to be close contacts of a confirmed Covid-19 case, the railway administration ordered two high-speed trains to be stopped, and hundreds of the passengers were put under centralized quarantine as secondary close contacts. Since Covid-19 appeared, this is the first time that high-speed trains have been stopped in the middle of trip because members of the crew had been confirmed as close contacts.
In some regions, the Covid-19 is under control, but there are a few areas where people are forbidden from leaving their residential complexes without a valid reason. These are places where mass testing is being carried out and cinemas and theaters have been forced to temporarily close, even though they have not had any confirmed cases.
On Saturday, Yanshan county in East China’s Jiangxi province made an emergency announcement that all the traffic lights in the county would be switched to red, due to the need for Covid-19 pandemic prevention and control to reduce unnecessary traveling. However, the county later stated that this was an emergency measure only for mitigating the heavy traffic on Saturday night. The announcement was invalid and later deleted. All the traffic lights in the county had been working as normal. No drivers were punished.
Also on Saturday, the press office of the Heilongjiang province government announced that the Heilongjiang Health Code of residents with household registration in the city of Heihe would turn yellow. The government provided services for the residents through hotlines and their official WeChat account to help Heihe residents living in other cities in the province change their health codes from yellow to green. However, some people said that the hotlines were all busy and that the official account was not functioning, leading residents to turn to the local government to provide a more efficient approach to update their health codes so that they could get back to their normal lives as soon as possible.
There is also an increasing number of cases of people finding themselves with a criminal record for violating relevant regulations during the pandemic. Some people have left their compounds by jumping over guardrails during lockdowns, while others have hung up or refused to answer the phone for epidemiological investigation or have abused the people doing the investigation.
In the early days of the effort to control the epidemic, there were cases of demarcating land, blocking transportation and logistics, locking down cities and conducting nucleic acid tests for all people to prevent the spread of the virus. We have also seen some extreme cases. For example, some senior citizens were tied to trees because they had gone out to buy cigarettes in Gaocheng district in Shijiazhuang, North China’s Hebei province; pandemic prevention volunteers broke into the home of a family of three who were playing mahjong together, with the players forced to parade through the streets in shame.
However, as epidemic prevention technologies and measures become increasingly mature, precise measures have started to receive more and more popular support, like Shanghai’s “catching mice in the ceramics shop.” This measure aims to achieve epidemic fast-tracking and control of the pandemic within spotted areas where outbreaks have occurred while ensuring normal urban production and life, so as to reduce disturbances to the public and avoid shutdowns. Meanwhile, protecting people’s privacy and basic personal rights while avoiding excessive control measures and overcorrection has become the bottom line of the rule of law for pandemic prevention and control.
However, recently there have been cases where the authorities have taken inappropriate action. For example, abruptly halting a train in transit and requiring all passengers to be sent to quarantine. Although most passengers were understanding and supportive, they should have been informed in advance, giving them a chance to adjust their plans. Another example is Yanshan county arranging for all the local traffic lights to turn red — something that can be compared to piece of performance art. This has made people wonder if the virus spreads at a different rate depending on whether an infected person is walking or driving. If there is a difference, as the Yanshan authorities claimed, setting all the traffic lights to red hardly seems like a solution.
As government regulations and policies are inviolable and have a great impact, they should not be expanded in a sprawling manner because of the legitimacy of fighting the pandemic. It is a protracted war, and the key to ensuring that the economy and society keep running normally lies in the predictability of pandemic prevention policies, rather than the introduction of “unexpected” ones. What we need are more carefully considered and scientifically based policies, rather than elusive policies that appear out of the blue. In addition, we should also be wary of local policies that might sound comprehensive, but do not accomplish anything practical. If the policy is disturbing and ineffective, policymakers should bear full responsibility.
Compared with all these “new measures,” the basic measures that began at the beginning of the pandemic, such as wearing masks, washing one’s hands frequently and holding fewer gatherings, show signs of loosening at the grassroots level, performing practically no function. In particular, with regard to the transmission of imported cases, we need to identify the loopholes and relevant details. The difficulty of these basic projects of pandemic prevention lies in their implementation. If authorities do not implement these measures meticulously, but expand and create silly tricks for their own benefit, it will be a real dereliction of duty, which could become the small leak that sinks the great ship.
Zhang Fan is an opinion editor at Caixin Media.
The views and opinions expressed in this opinion section are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Caixin Media.
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