China is no longer taking an economic pause and implementing lockdowns even if COVID-19 cases are on the rise in the country.
About half a year since it put an end to its draconian “Zero COVID” policies, China is once again hit by another surge of infections. However, the Chinese nation appears to be not bothered by it since it is more focused on reigniting its economic growth, the New York Times reported.
China used to have some of the harshest restrictions on the planet in response to COVID-19 as it sought to contain the situation and get rid of what were supposed to be small clusters of transmissions.
Earlier this week, a new update from China revealed that it was bracing for a new wave of COVID-19 infections that could see as many as 65 million cases per week by the end of June.
However, after witnessing and suffering through the lockdowns and restrictions, the country and its people no longer view the surge as a big deal.
“People feel differently about this wave. The last time, everyone was terrified, but now they don’t think it’s a big deal,” 30-year-old Qi Zhang, who works at a finance company in Tianjin, China, told NBC News on Thursday.
China no longer publishes regular updates on the country’s infection estimates. But Bloomberg claimed last December that the country witnessed around 37 million cases a day during the peak of the previous wave.
China started seeing a rise in cases in April. National health authorities predicted that by the end of May, cases could climb up to 40 million a week. However, Dr. Zhong Nanshan, a prominent doctor who was among the first to confirm the spread of the novel coronavirus in early 2020, said the pace of the latest infections is still uncertain.
Despite the threat, many people in China have opted to live freely in the post-pandemic era. Several have stopped wearing masks in public places.
“People have become used to infections, and they see this as normal in post-COVID era. Many of my friends got infected last year and got infected again this year. Personally, I’m pretty calm about the virus and pandemic,” Lin Zixian, 36, an employee of a Beijing-based technology company, told the Times in a phone interview.
By comparison, the U.S. reported over 5 million cases a week, based on official figures released in January. Experts said the lower number of cases in the country indicated a strong level of immunity against the infectious disease.
Published by Medicaldaily.com