Covid-19: China may not relax border controls until 2022

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By Zhuang Pinghui 

from South China Morning Post

• Preventing imported cases from sparking local outbreaks is ‘the priority among the priorities’, NDRC says in annual report

• Herd immunity in China will not be achieved until the middle of next year at the earliest, head of Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention says

China will maintain its strict border controls throughout this year to keep out Covid-19, the top economic planning agency said on Friday.

This came as the government said the pandemic was still serious, and a leading health expert said herd immunity was unlikely to be achieved before the middle of 2022.

Keeping the disease under control was one of the priorities for 2021, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said in its annual report released on Friday, and preventing imported cases from sparking local outbreaks was “the priority among the priorities”.

“Remote prevention and control measures will be strictly implemented,” the report said, referring to Beijing’s requirements that anyone planning to travel to China must meet before they set off.

“Public health systems at ports will be improved and all who enter China must take a nucleic test for the virus,” it said.

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The government tightened its controls on inbound travellers after several outbreaks – in Beijing, Heilongjiang, Jilin and Shandong provinces – were linked to foreign visitors after the disease had largely been brought under control within China.

The number of international flights was slashed and borders were closed to all but those with specific types of visas and from approved countries. Even after meeting those conditions, all foreign visitors and returning citizens must provide evidence of a negative coronavirus test to their local Chinese mission office before being granted the paperwork needed for travel.

Despite some countries – especially those whose vaccination programmes are picking up pace – considering relaxing their border controls, China is unlikely to follow suit any time soon, as its inoculation plan has started slowly.

According to official figures, just 52 million doses of vaccines had been given to Chinese citizens as of last month. Speaking on Monday, Zhong Nanshan, the country’s top expert on respiratory diseases, said that represented just 3.6 jabs per 100 people. In Israel the corresponding ratio is more than 90 per cent and in the US over 20 per cent.

Zhong said Beijing had set a target to boost the inoculation ratio to 40 jabs per 100 people by the end of July.

Gao Fu, head of Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, said last week it would be well over a year before herd immunity could be achieved in China.

“We estimate it will be the middle of next year at the earliest and the end of next year at the latest before 70 to 80 per cent [the threshold needed to achieve herd immunity] of the population has been inoculated,” he told China News Service.

While the approval of other vaccines – Beijing has so far given the green light to four products, all of them Chinese – would help with production issues, reaching herd immunity would also depend on support from the public, he said.

Tao Lina, a Shanghai-based expert on vaccines, said any move towards relaxing border controls would be dependent on a successful inoculation programme.

“Vaccination roll-out will have an impact on epidemic control measures and for that we need enough people to be vaccinated. It will be a test of the implementation capability,” he said.

Source: South China Morning Post

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3124300/covid-19-china-may-not-relax-border-controls-until-2022

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