A recent editorial co-authored by noted Chinese respiratory disease expert Zhong Nanshan provides insight into a Chinese approach to reopening. “The dynamic zeroing policy has been adopted for maintaining effective disease prevention and control. However, China needs to reopen so as to normalize socio-economic development and adapt to global reopening. Prolonged dynamic zeroing cannot be pursued in the long run,” he writes in an April 6 editorial in National Science Review of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The first three of the five recommendations offered in “Strategies for reopening in the forthcoming COVID-19 era in China” are as follows:
1. “Enforcing nationwide vaccination is crucial to safeguarding herd immunity.” Although the overall vaccination rate in China is over 85%, the rate is significantly lower for those over 70 years of age, and even worse for elderly people in Hong Kong. All ten deaths reported in Shanghai were of unvaccinated older people.
2. Improving the effectiveness and availability of medications and neutralizing antibody treatments. With the very low number of cases in China, it has been difficult for that nation to develop antivirals and antibody treatments domestically.