COVID-free fortress for the 2022 Olympics? China faces ultimate test for Beijing Games
For two years, China's government has targeted a zero-tolerance strategy for battling the coronavirus pandemic.
Authorities have gone to herculean lengths to keep the virus from spreading. Borders have been tightly sealed. Quarantine centers have separated families for weeks on end. Drones have been deployed to monitor and track as many of China's 1.4 billion people as possible. Harsh penalties await those who flout the rules.
"I played video games with my colleagues until 2 a.m., and then our company gave us milk and pastries for breakfast," said Che Zhenlei, 24, a computer coder who slept on a table in his firm's 13th floor Beijing office building when sudden epidemic control measures confined him inside. Che and 300 of his colleagues were allowed to leave about 24 hours later after they all tested negative for the virus.
The thousands of overseas visitors who have converged on China this month from dozens of countries for the Beijing Winter Olympics could complicate the country's efforts to remain substantially free of COVID-19 and its highly transmissible and faster-spreading omicron variant.
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Last summer's Olympic Games in Tokyo took place in a COVID-19 "bubble" to minimize cross-infections. Fans were barred from attending events, and overseas participants were restricted to designated hotels, the media center or competition venues during their first 14 days in the country.
Tokyo's bubble proved porous, and enforcement of the rules was haphazard. About 430 people associated with the Games tested positive for the virus, according to the organizing committee. The International Olympic Committee said months later there was no sign that COVID-19 spread from Games participants to the population.
Games organizers in Beijing are taking coronavirus precautionary measures to new heights. For a start, athletes, coaches, observers and media are separated from "mainland China" by a closed-loop Olympic bubble that cordons them off from the outside world. Most participants arrive in China on special charter flights and enter the loop as soon as they land. Their experiences of China will probably be limited to the airport, a hotel room and Olympic venues, which are connected by a closed transportation system that includes buses, taxis and high-speed trains.
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There is mandatory daily coronavirus testing, the closed loop is enforced by guarded fences and Beijing police warned locals to stay away from Olympic vehicles even in the event of an accident. There are no international spectators, and organizers have been coy on how many, if any, locals will be allowed to attend.
Tickets are distributed via organizations affiliated with China's Communist Party. The Chinese authorities requested that spectators and teammates clap rather than shout when they want to cheer on athletes, hoping that will cut down on the spread of the virus. At the main media center in Beijing, food is prepared and served by robot chefs, and dishes are delivered to tables from an overhead grid.
For the duration of the event, garbage will remain inside the loop, and anyone wishing to enter mainland China or vice versa, including cooks, cleaners, drivers and other Olympics support staff, must undergo at least 21 days of quarantine.
Participants can't leave their hotel room or accommodation without scanning a pass and waiting for a green code to confirm they've had a negative coronavirus test result within the past 24 hours. Those who test positive will be sent to special isolation shelters. There were more than 100 confirmed coronavirus infections related to the Winter Games in Beijing on Jan. 4-31, China's Olympic organizers said.
U.S. bobsled athlete Josh Williamson could be the first American athlete who has had to delay his Beijing travel plans after testing positive for the coronavirus.
Decorated American bobsledder Elana Meyers Taylor tested positive after arriving in China on Jan. 29 and is at an isolation hotel in Beijing.
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"It's annoying that every morning, you need to get up a little earlier to get a (coronavirus) PCR test. I think that in a few days, it will be like brushing your teeth," Russian hockey player Anton Slepyshev told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
"Everyone is concerned that the test result will suddenly turn out to be positive," he said. "But the reality is such that we are living with COVID. We accept all the risks and fears."
Locked-down lives
In late January 2020, China became the first country to impose a coronavirus lockdown, when 11 million residents of the city of Wuhan – where the pandemic is thought to have originated – were confined to their homes for months. Ever since, as other countries have relied on a combination of intermittent and often self-policed restrictions, social distancing guidance and vaccines, China's authorities have persisted with mass testing, blanket contact-tracing, uncompromising snap lockdowns and stringent quarantine measures until an outbreak wanes.
Official cases in China have remained low.
Since the start of the pandemic, China has recorded about 4,600 COVID-19 deaths, compared with 883,000 in the USA, according to Our World in Data, an online statistics website affiliated with Oxford University researchers. Western nations have accused China of a lack of transparency over its pandemic data, raising concerns over the accuracy of its official figures.
China disputes these allegations. Some studies have shown that because of differing testing capacities, data collection methods and other discrepancies, China might not be the only nation undercounting COVID-19 cases and deaths. South Korea, Italy, Japan, France, Spain, Iran and the USA, among others, may under-represent the pandemic's scope and toll, according to those studies.
China has a high share of the population who have been fully vaccinated – about 85% compared with 63% in the USA, according to Our World in Data.
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Ma Xiaowei, director of the National Health Commission, which devises China's health policies, told the official state media agency Xinhua in December that China can contain most coronavirus outbreaks within two weeks. He emphasized the importance of the "golden first 24 hours" – the time at the start of an outbreak when it is vital to identify close contacts of those infected and decisively cut transmission links.
Zunyou Wu, chief epidemiologist at China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention, estimated China's policy has prevented about 50 million coronavirus cases. Without its "dynamic zero-COVID policy," Wu told an economic conference in Beijing in November, China would have seen about 950,000 virus-related fatalities.
China's strategy has massively disrupted people's lives.
At the sight of a few cases, authorities have forced cities with millions of residents into rigid lockdowns, often with little notice or explanation. Fines, detention and public shaming await any who try to get around the restrictions.
China started mass testing Beijing residents. One report suggested that Xiong'an, a futuristic city near Beijing, was put under a full "Wuhan-style" lockdown under which nobody was allowed to enter or leave and people were told to stay indoors.
When 13 million residents of the northwestern city of Xian were hit by a lockdown, Chinese social media erupted with tales of food shortages.
Thousands of shoppers were trapped in a mega-mall in Shanghai for more than two days in January as authorities locked it down for COVID-19 screening.
A criminal who went on the run for three years after he was charged with fraud turned himself in because he got fed up with life without access to a "health code," a national QR-code system with a green, red or amber indicator of health status required to ride the subway, check into a hotel and enter most public areas.
Jessica Chu, 30, a real estate agent from Shanghai, described how an impromptu 48-hour lockdown in her apartment building forced her to miss a test to get her driver's license. "It really (messed up) my plans," she said.
Flare-ups and downsides
Seeking an explanation for coronavirus flare-ups, Chinese health authorities claimed the virus could be transmitted to humans from tainted imported goods, such as frozen seafood and fruits, and advised against overseas purchases. The World Health Organization downplayed the likelihood of goods contaminated with COVID-19.
Economists at Goldmans Sachs and other banks concluded that China's zero-tolerance COVID-19 strategy may do more harm than good to its economy in light of the more infectious omicron variant.
Goldman Sachs cut its projection for Chinese annual economic growth in 2022 to 4.3% from 4.8%. That's roughly half last year's growth rate.
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Lydia Khalil, a researcher at the Lowy Institute, an Australia-based foreign affairs think tank, wrote that the pandemic strategy "emboldened China to expand and promote its tech-enabled authoritarianism" in the name of public health and safety. China has increased state surveillance, adopted more invasive policing tools and eroded privacy and civil liberties, Khalil wrote.
After a salesman at a gym walked for eight days straight, crossing mountains and rivers, to evade coronavirus restrictions, a brief Chinese police notice on Dec. 16 explained that he had been detained and taken to "centralized isolation measures." Police published a map of the man's journey. They tracked him by his phone the entire way.
For the past two years, investigations by Western nations, human rights organizations and the United Nations over allegations that China detained more than a million Turkic Muslim Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region as part of a campaign to wipe out their culture, language and beliefs have stagnated partly because coronavirus restrictions prevented outsiders from visiting an area that was already difficult to access. China said the allegations are unfounded and reflect Western propaganda. Beijing has provided no evidence or information to undermine the allegations.
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China's coronavirus measures have yielded unexpected benefits for some.
A blind date became an awkward ordeal for a woman who had to stay in her suitor's apartment for four nights after authorities imposed a strict COVID-19 lockdown.
It was "not ideal," the woman said of the situation in a social media post.
But she noted that her date was gracious and "good at cooking," and she was "hanging in there." A month later, Zhao Xiaoqing, 28, announced that she and her blind date, Zhao Fei, got engaged. "I found love during the quarantine. This is the biggest gift I had in 2021," Zhao said. "Our souls clicked."
For others, sharing burdens during tough times has reinforced a sense of community.
The sudden decision to close the Shanghai mall forced many shoppers to set up makeshift beds in the mall's movie theaters, camping stores and beauty parlors. Restaurants and stores distributed free meals and supplies.
"I was touched by the kindness of both the customers and business," said Miao Cuiyan, the mall's general manager, who was quarantined with the shoppers.
"Our prevention and control policy is very good. It has controlled the pandemic. It is not as chaotic in China as it is abroad," said Che, the computer coder who got marooned in his Beijing office. "We have been taught from childhood to emphasize collective interests. If everyone cooperates, the pandemic can end sooner."