The utopia of COVID-19 zero, by Elmer Huerta

This month marks two years since the discovery –at least officially– of the first cases of COVID-19 in the city of Wuhan in China. During that time, countries were divided – grossly – into two large groups in their way of controlling the pandemic. Some followed the COVID-19 zero strategy; while others, that of containment and mitigation. The difference between those two couldn’t be more obvious.

While they awaited the development of vaccines and then carried out their vaccination campaigns, the countries that used the containment and mitigation measures (Peru among them) employed a strategy that combined, to a variable degree, the temporary closure of their borders, quarantines, the mandatory use of masks, the prohibition of events that could lead to contagion in closed spaces, and epidemiological surveillance to – to varying degrees of efficiency – detect and isolate positive cases.

Meanwhile, countries that used the zero COVID-19 strategy (including China, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Taiwan) completely closed their borders, isolated themselves from the world, imposed mandatory 14-day quarantines on all visitors, and used severe epidemiological surveillance, closing entire cities if a single case of infection was found. That explains the staggering 10-20 daily cases of infection in a country with more than a billion people like China, or the absence of cases and deaths for days or weeks in New Zealand.

a comment, published in April in “The Lancet”, refers that, compared to the countries that chose the containment and mitigation strategy (including the US and Europe), those that chose the zero COVID-19 strategy had zero mortality rates. lower capita, shorter and less stringent quarantines and faster economic recovery, conditions that allowed its inhabitants to enjoy a relatively normal life.

The point is that – as he declared to the magazine “Science” University of Hong Kong epidemiologist Ben Cowling – the emergence of the highly contagious delta variant, pandemic population fatigue, the economic damage of keeping borders tightly closed, and the advent of vaccines have raised questions about validity and, above all, the duration of the COVID-19 zero strategy. The expert said that, in the long term, this strategy is not economically sustainable and that “countries will need to try different approaches to find the right balance between infection prevention and control and the normalization of social activities.”

—New Zealand and Australia—

Strict practitioners of the COVID-19 zero strategy, both countries have drastically reversed their approach and accepted that eliminating the infection from their countries will be an impossible task.

Australia, since discovering the first case of the delta variant in mid-June, in the city of Sydney, is having the highest number of COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic (2,372, October 10). That made the Australian Government definitively abandon the COVID-19 zero strategy on August 6 and focus its attention on mass vaccination of the population, with the aim of relaxing measures when it reaches a vaccination coverage of 70% of the total population. (As of October 30, it is at 60.1%). The government has said that when they reach 80%, life could return to normal.

“The zero COVID-19 strategy is not economically sustainable.”

New Zealand announced the first week of October who abandoned his COVID-19 zero plan after battling unsuccessfully for seven weeks against an outbreak of the delta variant. Its authorities have placed all their hopes on vaccination, which after a slow start has reached 63.2% of the total population as of October 30.

—The case of China—

So far, China remains the only large country in persist with the zero COVID-19 policy. It maintains that position as a political matter of pride, with its authorities affirming that success in containing the virus is an ideological and moral victory over the United States and other nations that are already beginning to consider COVID-19 an endemic disease.

With a strategy focused on massive vaccination (as of October 30, 76.3% of its population is fully vaccinated), an aggressive epidemiological surveillance, discovering early cases and building epidemiological fences of entire regions of the country and severely punishing officials who are not attentive to the detection of cases and containment measures, the Chinese Government is managing to maintain its zero COVID-19 policy.

However, the wall could crack. A Reuters note from October 30 reports that Mi Feng, spokesman for the National Health Commission (NHC) of China, said that 14 provinces have reported cases in the last two weeks and that the outbreak is developing so rapidly that the virus control situation is already a serious matter and complicated. The outbreak has exposed the mental laxity of some local authorities, Wu Liangyou, another NHC official, told Reuters.

-Corollary-

Given the course of events, it is important to recognize that the COVID-19 zero policy has no real foothold and we must also accept that COVID-19 is becoming an endemic disease. As painful as it may seem, we must recognize that there will always be sick people and deaths from COVID-19, and each society will have to decide the number of cases and deaths it wants to have.

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