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So far, China has weathered the crown crisis lightly. This is not only due to strict government measures, but also drug use.
China has put a lot of pressure on its people in the fight against the corona virus. In some cases, cities with millions of inhabitants were isolated for weeks. Tight isolation, massive testing, and virtually complete digital tracking of cases have seen the multi-billion dollar population weather the crisis better than many other countries, even if privacy was not taken into account.
With just over 90,000 corona infections, China is comparatively far behind other countries, according to Johns Hopkins University (as of Nov. 17). About 4,700 people have died from the corona virus in China so far, and more than 86,000 are currently considered to have recovered.
Life and economy largely normalized
According to the leadership in Beijing, there have been hardly any new infections for months, so life and economic activity have returned to normal. Economists expect China to be the only major economy this year to end the year with positive growth. Even in Wuhan, the former epicenter of the pandemic, where the virus was first detected around the world last December, something akin to normal has long since returned.
Wuhan was the first Chinese city to be completely isolated for weeks due to the virus. Of the more than 90,000 officially reported infections in China, there were more than 50,000 in the metropolis alone. Most of the dead were also found there: more than 3,800 people died in Wuhan.
China does not use an approved agent
So far, there has been good news from Germany, Russia, and the United States about the success of vaccine studies and drug approval. But what about China? In April it still seemed that the People’s Republic had a clear advantage. Sinovac Biotech tested the efficacy of a possible vaccine months ago. At least four Chinese vaccines are now well advanced, the Reuters news agency reported. Including one from China National Biotec Group (CNBG), one from CanSino Biologics and one from Sinovac. Sinovac and CNBG expect the first test data this month.
Although there is still no approved vaccine or drug against the coronavirus in China, thousands of people have already been treated with a drug, according to a New York Times report. There are a number of tests in the city of Yiwu in eastern China. According to the “New York Times”, 500 cans were shipped there and sold out within a few hours.
“The risks have not been clearly identified”
The problems with the active ingredient have not yet been made public. Copies of a candidate’s vaccination approval forms that were verified by the “New York Times” contained no indication that the drug was still in the testing phase. “These types of risks have not been clearly identified,” Yanzhong Huang, a senior global health official at the Council on Foreign Relations and an expert on health care in China, told the newspaper.
It is not clear how many people have already received a candidate vaccine. China has provided three of its four candidate vaccines in late-stage human trials, known as phase 3 trials, to tens of thousands of state-owned company employees, government officials and corporate executives since July. Upon completion of phase 3 studies, companies would present the results to national regulatory authorities. The authorities would review and evaluate them for approval. It is not yet known how safe this procedure is.
Beijing watches over vaccine testers
Chinese local governments have announced that they plan to make the current vaccines available to more people. Beijing says it is monitoring those who received the vaccines, but has not released any details.
Zhong Nanshan is something like the Christian Drosten of China. The top epidemiologist of the People’s Republic already gave direction with his advice when the SARS lung disease struck his country in 2003. At that time, the Chinese gained significant experience in fighting the coronavirus. This knowledge advantage also helped the country to overcome the crisis better than Western countries.
China is not afraid of a second wave
While the “second wave” is sweeping the United States and Europe, Zhong Nanshan can mainly deliver good news. Chinese state media quoted the star researcher as saying that he does not assume there will be another large-scale corona outbreak in China. “The current situation in China is secure. But it was a difficult victory to achieve,” said the 84-year-old doctor, summing up the situation.
There are still occasional local outbreaks, most recently in the western Xinjiang region, where more than 180 infections have been reported. Or in the coastal city of Qingdao, where a good dozen people were infected with the virus in a hospital.
In both cases, the authorities reacted with huge countermeasures: almost 10 million people in Qingdao were tested for the virus in four days. In Xinjiang, more than four million people had to be examined, hundreds of thousands were sent to a new blockade. In the rest of China, meanwhile, life can go on.
