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Thousands of Chinese travellers on January 8 returned home for family reunions – some delayed by as long as three years – as China finally opened its borders and dismantled the last remnant of its “zero-COVID” regime. Starting January 8, travellers to China for the first time were no longer required to undergo quarantine on arrival.
China’s opening of its borders after three years will likely have many ramifications for India and the world – economically, politically, and from the point of view of public health.
China is expecting to see a surge in outbound tourism after three years of closed borders, despite many countries, India included, now requiring travellers from China to take PCR tests before their trips. The orders for international flights were up 628% from last year, State media quoted online Chinese travel agency LY as saying. Hong Kong, the United States, Thailand and Japan are among the most sought after travel destinations. Some countries like Thailand are rolling out the red carpet to welcome back Chinese tourists – a big source of revenue – after three lean years. Others, such as Japan, have responded more warily, worried about the surge in cases in China.
Should India be alarmed by China’s ongoing COVID-19 surge – with as many as 250 million cases estimated as of December 20 – and with China’s borders now open? Former WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan, who was in conversation with The Hindu’s Zubeda Hamid, had this to say:
“We’ve now completed three years, we are into the fourth year of the pandemic. One thing that’s become clear is that this virus is not going away any time soon. What we’ve also seen is the remarkable capacity of this virus to evolve. Now, specifically in China, because they had such a strict zero-COVID policy over the last few years, there was very little natural infection that occurred, and the only protection people have is from vaccination. Unfortunately, in China, the rate of vaccination in the over-60s is less than ideal. As we know, if you’re an older person, you have underlying co-morbidities, chronic diseases, and the risk of getting severely ill is much, much higher. That is why there is this concern today that in China, not only can the Omicron sub-variants cause huge surges in infection, but this could translate potentially into a significant amount of both morbidity and mortality… India is in a different situation because we have high vaccination coverage, including among the elderly. What we don’t have is very high booster uptake. But there’s been a lot of natural infection over the last three years, and therefore people have built up a good level of protective immunity at the population level. This should be good enough to prevent an infection surge translating into hospitalisation or mortality surge.”
You can read our full conversation with Dr. Swaminathan and Giridhara R. Babu here.
You can also listen to the conversation in this podcast.
Meanwhile, WHO officials met with representatives from China last week to talk about the surge in cases, urging them to share real-time data so other countries can respond effectively. The talks came after WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged Beijing to be more forthcoming on the pandemic situation in the world’s most populous country.
More of our coverage on China’s COVID-19 surge:
We looked at how Beijing went from a zero-COVID policy to letting the virus up, and the abrupt and messy end to three years of COVID restrictions.
FILE PHOTO: Paxlovid, Pfizer's anti-viral medication to treat the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), is displayed in this picture illustration taken October 7, 2022. A morning and an evening does consists of one white 100-milligram tablet of Ritonavir and two pink 150-milligram tablets of PF-07321332. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/Illustration/File Photo | Photo Credit: WOLFGANG RATTAY
Chinese health experts are warning that fake versions of Indian generic medicines are flooding the black market in China as a record surge of COVID-19 cases fuels demand for antivirals, particularly Pfizer’s Paxlovid and Indian generic versions. With Paxlovid in short supply and highly regulated in government clinics, sales of Indian generic versions have ballooned through Chinese e-commerce platforms in the wake of the ending of the “zero-COVID” policy on December 7.
The Top Five
What we are reading this week – the best of The Hindu’s Opinion and Analysis:
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) bangs the Speaker's gavel for the first time after being elected the next Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives in a late night 15th round of voting on the fourth day of the 118th Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., January 7, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein | Photo Credit: EVELYN HOCKSTEIN
- Narayan Lakshman explains the state of play in U.S. politics after a record-making 15 voting rounds were conducted before Kevin McCarthy succeeded in acquiring the Speaker’s gavel. With the Senate and White House firmly in the grip of Democrats, he now has the daunting task of advancing the Republican cause in Congress.
- Nathan Ruser and Baani Grewal analyse the significance of the recent clash between Indian and Chinese troops along the Line of Actual Control in the Eastern Sector in Arunachal Pradesh, and how a Chinese push for infrastructure is raising new tensions.
- Also on the LAC clash in Arunachal, Air Vice Marshal Manmohan Bahadur (Retd) argues why even as low level clashes are recurring, India should not be lulled into complacency, considering the challenge it faces when it comes to multi-domain operations.
- Meera Srinivasan writes on Sri Lanka’s Tamil National Alliance, which, despite electoral losses and brickbats from rival parties and critics, keeps pushing for a political solution to Sri Lanka’s ethnic question within the framework of a ‘united, undivided, indivisible’ country.
- KV Rajan and Atul K. thakur write on the challenge facing India in stabilising relations with Nepal in the wake of recent political changes in the country.
