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China, where the coronavirus was first detected in late 2019, is one of the latest countries to follow a zero-tolerance policy towards the outbreak. Over two years, its official report only reports a little over 100,000 cases of contamination, including 4,636 fatalities.
The country’s borders are practically closed, people from abroad can only enter China after three weeks of quarantine and entire cities are placed in confinement as soon as a few cases appear.
The communist regime celebrates its health policy as proof of the superiority of its political system, compared to the epidemic outbreak in the rest of the world.
But the absence of circulation of the virus also means that the Chinese are less well immunized, notes one of the main experts of the country, in an article published Monday on the social network Weibo.
“The natural infection rate of Chinese people is a hundred or a thousand times lower than that of Western countries, and the immune barrier relies entirely on vaccines,” observes Zeng Guang, former chief expert of the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention. diseases.
“This low rate of natural infection was a glorious victory, today it is a weakness,” he adds.
The zero Covid strategy cannot stay in place forever and “the long-term goal of humanity is to coexist with the virus”, at acceptable rates of morbidity and mortality, pleads Mr. Zeng.
He said Western countries are showing “admirable courage” in learning to live with the virus and China must “watch and learn from” this experience.
“In the near future, when the time comes, a roadmap for a Chinese-style cohabitation with the virus will have to be presented,” suggests the scholar, who was one of the researchers behind the country’s initial response. to the epidemic.
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