Wu Zunyou clarifies misconceptions

Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, took to his social media on Monday to clarify four common misconceptions about the dynamic zero-COVID policy.

1. Dynamic zero-COVID policy does not mean having no infected cases.

Dynamic zero-COVID policy means stamping out an outbreak whenever it occurs and doing so in a relatively short time frame so that it won't lead to community spread. It does not mean the whole country has no infected cases.

Under the dynamic zero-COVID policy, so long as there is no community spread, it is acceptable for cases to exist in quarantine because they are temporarily isolated from society. For example, an area may report over 200 cases in a day, but if they are all from the quarantine facilities, this means there are no transmission at the community level, which is a prerequisite for achieving dynamic clearance.

2. Dynamic zero-COVID policy does not mean city-wide lockdown.

The dynamic clearance measures change in accordance with the situation. If an outbreak is detected early, health workers only need to quarantine and treat the patients while keeping an eye on the quarantined close contacts. In the past two years, Shanghai had encountered 12 outbreaks and had successfully quelled them without resorting to lockdowns. Lockdown measures are used when wide scale community spread occurs.

3. Dynamic zero-COVID policy does not always require mass testing.

So long as the outbreak is detected early and has a clear transmission chain that allows experts to find all the close contacts, then there is no need for mass testing. Mass testing is used when there is wide scale community spread that have unclear transmission chains.

4. Dynamic zero-COVID policy does not significantly affect the economy.

If an outbreak is detected and controlled early, dynamic clearance strategy will have a negligible impact on the economy. However, if the outbreak were to gain momentum, leading to mass testing and lockdown measures, then this policy will have certain impact on the economy. Generally speaking, the dynamic zero-COVID policy safeguards the overall development of the economy.