CHINA-HEALTH: CHINA SETTING UP NEW PERMANENT CORONAVIRUS TESTING AND QUARANTINE CENTRES THROUGHOUT CHINA
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FT (June 9) reported that China is building hundreds of thousands of permanent coronavirus
testing facilities and expanding quarantine centres across many of its biggest cities as part of
its zero-Covid policy, despite the economic and human toll on the world’s most populous
country. Tough restrictions in scores of cities have driven the country to the edge of recession
for just the second time in three decades. But even though measures have been eased in many
areas, experts believe the government’s virus infrastructure programme is designed to sustain
the mass-testing and quarantine policies through 2023. Officials are racing to execute
instructions to be able to test entire city populations within 24 hours. Bigger metropolises must
now have testing sites available within no more than a 15-minute walk of residents’ homes,
and temporary facilities are being replaced with permanent booths sourced from private
medical companies. The country’s 31 provinces and regions are also following orders from
Beijing to prepare new hospitals and quarantine facilities in the case of a Shanghai-style surge
in infections. Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for Global Health at the Council for Foreign Relations think-tank, said such measures demonstrated Beijing’s commitment to zero-Covid
“despite this growing social, economic cost associated with this approach”.
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