Opinion | China must be alert of ‘race to the bottom’ risks in Covid-19 zero-tolerance drive

Quarantine requirements vary across the mainland, but there’s little scientific evidence to support the different approaches to controlling Covid-19

For local cadres, it’s an easy choice to implement harsh coronavirus control measures, even when some are controversial

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From Wednesday, Beijing will require all domestic visitors, along with Beijing residents returning home from other places, to present a negative nucleic acid test result within the previous 48 hours. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 5:30pm, 15 Nov 2021Updated: 11:16pm, 15 Nov 2021

China’s campaign to control the spread of Covid-19 is showing a potentially dangerous tendency.

Under the central authorities’ general guideline that the coronavirus must be controlled, some local governments across China are pulling out all the stops with their social and mobility control measures. While some of these efforts, including massive nucleic acid testing, have proved effective in restoring social and economic order by bringing the virus under control in a short period of time, many policies have clearly gone too far.

A new round of disparate “local policies” across different places, especially those with Covid-19 cases, is turning the vast country into a hodgepodge of quarantines and travel-limit regimes.

To begin with, for anyone to visit China from abroad, the quarantine requirements vary across the limited mainland areas that are accepting travellers from overseas. Shanghai and Shenzhen remain the most “friendly” with 14 days of centralised quarantine plus seven days of quarantine at home.

But Shenyang, the capital of northeast Liaoning province, requires 28 days of centralised quarantine and another 28 days of home quarantine. There’s little scientific basis to explain the differences.

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