Coronavirus pandemic in China is over, top Covid-19 adviser to Beijing declares

Liang Wannian hails China’s political system, its people and professional public health system as ‘decisive’ factors behind win in Covid battle
Remarks come a week after China’s top leadership also hails ‘decisive victory’ and ‘miracle’ of successful exit from zero-Covid

Coronavirus China

Xinlu Liang

Published: 8:31pm, 23 Feb 2023

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The pandemic in China is over, the country’s top adviser on its Covid-19 response said, declaring a “decisive victory” days after core leaders called the successful exit from zero-Covid policy a “miracle”.

“The pandemic still exists from a global perspective and the harm of the disease still exists, but we can say our country has achieved a major and decisive victory in the prevention and control of the Covid-19 pandemic,” Liang Wannian, head of the National Health Commission’s Covid-19 expert response team, said.

“As a populous country, we have created a good example of successfully emerging from the pandemic.”

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Liang’s remarks on Thursday came a week after the Politburo Standing Committee – the top decision-making body of China’s ruling Communist Party – also hailed a “decisive victory” over the pandemic, with members at a meeting chaired by President Xi Jinping labelling the pivot to living with the virus as a “miracle”.

The superiority of China’s political system, the power of its people, and its professional public health system were among the factors that “played a decisive role” in winning the battle against the disease, Liang said.

Health authorities had taken into account the metrics of the infection rate, population immunity levels, virus mutations, the resilience of China’s healthcare system, and the prevention and response mechanism to come to this conclusion, he explained.

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This comes as China reverts to normal life after nearly three years of strict anti-pandemic restrictions involving mass testing, quarantines, lockdowns and border controls, under a “zero-Covid policy” that hurt its economy and sparked social discontent.

However, Liang also sounded a note of caution. While the Covid-19 wave in China had basically ended in terms of its epidemiological characteristics, it was not “completely over” – given the current “sporadic, localised” pattern of infections in the country, he clarified.

It was essential to remain vigilant against virus mutations, he told a press conference in Beijing.

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Latest data from the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) says 20,000 people were in hospital with Covid-19 as of February 16, and 98 had died in the preceding week.

Yang Feng, surveillance head at the National Administration of Disease Prevention and Control, said monitoring channels had been further expanded and multiple subsystems set up, including for case reports, fever clinics and medical institutions, sewage tracking, and case clusters in key institutions.

“A multichannel monitoring system that takes into account normality and emergency, inbound and local [cases], urban and rural areas, general population and key population groups has been initially formed,” Yang said.

Chang Zhaorui, a researcher at the China CDC, said the relatively high level of overall public immunity meant the risk of large-scale cluster outbreaks was low.