Such rigid methods can be problematic to maintain as new clusters emerge across China each week. If we suddenly remove the lockdown, those people are going to go outside again and start spreading the disease once more." Moreover, lockdowns only work if they are absolutely enforced for long periods of time, says Tamer Oraby, a statistician at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley, who studies how outbreaks spread: "With short term lockdowns, the disease is probably going to keep spreading between individuals of a household for a while. And many of China's migrant workers – who power the country's service and e-commerce industries – have been unable to see their families in other cities because they fear being locked down away from their jobs if they were to return for a visit and then end up in lockdown. Two- or three-week hotel quarantines for close contacts or those traveling from a region with active COVID cases must be paid out of pocket, a heavy expense for most citizens. Socioeconomically vulnerable populations are hit the hardest.
These complete lockdowns are effective at reducing total infections and giving hospitals time to prepare, but they require heavy sacrifices from those stuck inside. When infections surface, China opts for large-scale lockdownsĬhina has excelled at identifying and isolating new infections while shutting down large swathes of the country if needed to block new clusters from growing. But with the highly-contagious delta variant now spreading across the country, some public health experts have begun to question whether China's zero tolerance can contain the pandemic long term – and whether it is worth the cost. These are some of the ways China has been keeping new daily coronavirus infections to sometimes single digits. Traveling from a place with delta cases? That could be three weeks of hotel quarantine in a city such as Beijing.
The appearance of a single delta case can get an entire city locked down. Within China, anti-virus measures are even more strict for residents than for international travelers entering the country. Most of the people in this story, like Tom, asked us to use only their first name because they do not want to jeopardize their chances of getting back into China. Tom and his family are among hundreds of thousands of people stuck outside China, sometimes separated from loved ones or their livelihoods. As of last month, he and his family has moved to Thailand where, for the first time in more than a year and a half, they can live together. He finally had to relocate, at least temporarily. "You think, let's just try for one more month, but eventually that breaks ," says Tom. He applied again and waited for them in China. He made it back to China by receiving a special letter approved by the mayor of the Chinese city he works in, but his family were not able to get permission to enter. Later, it even stopped issuing new passports to its own citizens to curb travel. Tom and his family traveled back to the United States, but in March last year, China sealed off its borders. Wang Guansen/Xinhua /Xinhua News Agency via Getty ImagesīEIJING – When Tom, an American businessman, got a dream job building up a multinational company in China, he happily moved his young family there. Restaurants could only offer takeout food. Most establishments were closed with the exception of markets, hospitals and pharmacies. Ruili closed off its city proper and asked all residents to quarantine at home. A community worker delivered daily necessities to a household in Ruili City in China's Yunnan Province during a July lockdown triggered by COVID cases.
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