Chinese authorities have deployed a harsh playbook to snuff out the outbreak — no matter the cost.
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 | | The New York Times |
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 | | Workers and volunteers in a compound where residents were tested in Shanghai on Monday.Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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Shanghai's unsparing lockdown |
As the highly contagious Omicron variant rips through Shanghai, Chinese authorities have deployed a familiar draconian playbook to try to snuff out the outbreak — no matter the cost. |
For a look at the situation in the city, and what it means for China going forward, I spoke to my colleague Keith Bradsher, our new Beijing bureau chief. |
What's the latest on the situation in Shanghai? |
Shanghai locked down a third of the city for four days, followed by locking down the other two-thirds of the city for four days. But that has not been enough. They found tens of thousands of cases during those eight days. So they have extended the lockdown for the whole city. They retested all 25 million people in Shanghai on Monday and are doing so again on Wednesday. |
 | | Daily new cases in China, seven-day average.The New York Times |
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What's life like in the city's quarantine centers? |
Conditions vary. These convention centers are supposed to be where you are sent if you have only mild symptoms but are still potentially infectious. They have rows of beds for literally thousands of people, but there are not a lot of doctors and nurses. |
There are a lot of complaints. There is a high risk of cross-infection. There are essentially no showers. These are convention centers that were originally designed with toilets and sinks for thousands of conventiongoers but not for people to live there. People try to wash their faces and so forth in basins. |
There was also a fire on Monday morning next to one of the exhibition centers, with thousands of people sealed inside because they were most likely infected. The fire broke out at a temporary outdoor waste storage area because the trash was piling up from having all these people staying there. Fortunately, the fire was brought quickly under control, but that further alarmed everyone. |
Have there been other concerns? |
What is really tragic is when you see children separated from their parents as part of this quarantine effort. The day after videos went viral of infants and toddlers sharing a crib and wailing because they had been taken from their parents, a national outcry ensued. |
Shanghai authorities have responded by saying that infected children will be allowed to quarantine with their parents if the parents are also infected. Infected children 7 and up whose parents are not infected must be quarantined separately from their parents. The authorities are trying to set up quarantine facilities for very young children or children with special needs who are infected while their parents are not. But for now, young children can still be taken away from their parents and isolated separately. There have also been harsh measures with regard to pets. |
Well, one town in another province announced several days ago that they would kill all the pets of people who tested positive. They later rescinded that. We've seen scenes of medical workers taking oral swabs of pets. That's better than automatically killing all the pets that belong to infected people, but there's been no word on what happened to the pets that test positive. |
What are China's lessons from Shanghai? |
One unfortunate aspect of all of this is that Shanghai had been a leader in China in adopting a slightly less draconian approach to lockdowns. Shanghai had taken pride in locking down a single store — instead of many square miles — in response to a handful of cases. |
But even before the current full lockdown in Shanghai, the municipal authorities responded to the detection of even a single case in an office or a store by sometimes locking everyone down at that location for 48 hours or more even if the office or the store had no beds — people just had to sleep on the floors. Despite many restrictions on personal mobility and individual rights, Shanghai is having a lot of trouble containing the highly transmissible Omicron variants. |
Has the situation in Shanghai changed how the central government is reacting to the virus? |
They are doubling down on a more stringent "zero Covid" approach of lockdowns because that has been proved to work, while neighborhood-specific or even shop-specific lockdowns have sometimes been less effective. |
 | | A booster shot being given in Los Angeles in March.Alisha Jucevic for The New York Times |
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The future of U.S. vaccines |
The meeting represents a transition point for the federal government. Many scientists have concluded that the existing vaccines need to be retooled to bolster protection against a fast-evolving virus, and federal officials want to figure out how to do that as soon as possible. |
Robert Johnson, the director of an infectious disease division within the Health and Human Services Department, outlined a tight time frame. He said clinical trials would have to be underway by next month in order to produce the shots by the fall. |
"If you're not on your way to that clinical trial by the beginning of May, it is very difficult to have collectively across manufacturers enough product to meet that demand," he said. |
At the same time, multiple experts told the panel that no one knows whether yet another significant variant will emerge before the fall — and if it does, whether it will be more like Omicron and its subvariants or like earlier and more severe variants, such as Delta. |
What are your questions about the future of the virus? |
In the beginning, there was Alpha. Then Beta, Delta, Omicron and a bunch of lesser-known coronavirus variants in between. We're used to the cycle now: Right when we think we can breathe a sigh of relief, a new variant appears with fresh mysteries and confusion. |
It's frustrating to keep having our hopes dashed. And there's no end in sight because new variants will almost certainly keep appearing. |
Given our future with these new versions of the coronavirus, we're hoping you can help us better understand what's in store. We're asking readers: What are your questions about the future of the virus and its variants? We'll bring your queries to experts and get some answers. If you'd like to participate, you can fill out this form here. We may use your question in an upcoming newsletter. |
What else we're following |
My mother passed away in June 2021. My family endured furloughs, contracting Covid and a toilet paper shortage whose memes will last forever. I didn't think I would enter my senior year of high school motherless. I'll miss not being able to tell her about my first date, her helping me pick out a dress for prom or waving goodbye as I leave for college. How will I know how to get stubborn stains out of my clothes? Or have someone to vent to about my roommate? I'm scared. How will I get through the rest of my life without her? — Katherine Beebe, Texas |
Let us know how you're dealing with the pandemic. Send us a response here, and we may feature it in an upcoming newsletter. |
| Erin Kelly compiled photos for this briefing. Nancy Wartik contributed to today's newsletter. |
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