Chinese President Xi Jinping defended that the tough anti-epidemic measures imposed in Shanghai “will stand the test of time” and promised to fight any attempt to “distort, question and challenge” the “zero covid” policy.
Xi on Thursday presided over a meeting of the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, the summit of power in China.
The Chinese leader said Communist Party officials and cadres must stand firm and not waver in fighting the disease, according to state media.
China will prevail in the fight against Covid-19 in Shanghai, just as it did in Wuhan, Xi Jinping assured, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
Wuhan, a city located in central China, diagnosed the first cases of the new coronavirus at the end of 2019. The city was under de facto quarantine for almost two months.
Shanghai’s 25 million people have been confined for more than a month, in the face of the country’s most serious outbreak since then.
In Beijing, officials shut down businesses and metro stations, told people to work from home and ordered mass tests across the city.
China is one of the few countries to maintain a zero-tolerance policy for the disease, at a time when the virus has become endemic in most parts of the world.
The country reacts with relentless measures against outbreaks of the new coronavirus, isolating entire cities or neighborhoods, despite the growing economic and social costs.
Although this policy has helped China to virtually extinguish the disease on its territory, in the last two years, the highly contagious Ómicron variant is calling into question the effectiveness of containment measures.
“We must be firm in overcoming thoughts of indifference and hypocritical thoughts and underestimating the epidemic,” reads a statement released after the meeting ended.
“We must keep a clear head and unswervingly adhere to the dynamic general policy of zero covid cases. We must fight speeches and acts that distort, question or reject our country’s anti-epidemic guidelines and policies”, he added.
The statement pointed out that there are still many cases of Covid-19 and that the virus is constantly mutating, suggesting that “great uncertainties” prevail about how the pandemic will develop.
“China is a country with a large population and a large aging population,” said the same note.
“With unbalanced regional development and lack of medical resources, the relaxation of control measures would cause a major outbreak, many cases of serious illness and deaths. Socio-economic development and people’s health and safety would be severely affected”, he said.
China’s leadership has repeatedly said it will stick to its policy on the disease, but Thursday’s meeting was the first to address the Shanghai outbreak.
Chinese leaders also want to keep Covid-19 under control in the run-up to the 20th Communist Party Congress later this year.
It is the most important event on the Chinese political agenda and it should serve this year to guarantee a third term for Xi Jinping, breaking with the political tradition of recent decades.
The Shanghai lockdown has sparked public outcry over food shortages and difficulties in getting medical treatment.
Nearly 600,000 people have tested positive for Covid-19 since March, and about 19 million remain closed at home. However, the number of new daily cases has started to drop over the past two weeks.
The Politburo statement said the “great defensive battle in Shanghai” had already “resulted”.
According to data released on Thursday by the World Health Organization (WHO), between 13 and 17 million people have died directly or indirectly related to Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.
The figures advanced by the North American University Johns Hopkins point to 6.2 million deaths caused by the new coronavirus so far.
Covid-19 has caused 6.2 million deaths since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.
The rapidly spreading and mutating Ómicron variant has become dominant in the world since it was first detected in November in South Africa.