China reports zero local symptomatic Covid-19 cases for first time in weeks

Written By: Mike Smith - Date published: - 55 comments
Categories: australian politics, China, covid-19, Media

You probably won’t see this in our local media, as our pundits today debate whether it is time to ditch our elimination strategy and Australia gives up on it. China is also well ahead on ensuring its vast population is vaccinated as well.

The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reports:

China has stuck to its zero-tolerance strategy against Covid-19, counting on mass vaccination, mass testing, stay-at-home orders and contact tracing to put a stop to transmission.

The country had administered 1.94 billion vaccine doses as of Sunday, according to the National Health Commission. More than 777 million people – about 55 per cent of the population – had been fully vaccinated as of August 12.

China’s official Global Times also provides some useful advice, speaking in the classic Chinese way of the “Four Earlies: early detection, early reporting, early quarantine, and early treatment of COVID-19 cases.”

Wang Guangfa, a respiratory expert at Peking University First Hospital, told the Global Times on Monday that China’s precise zero-tolerance epidemic strategy has guarded the country against epidemic flare-ups one more time, despite the highly-transmissible Delta variant and larger areas affected, further proving the effectiveness of China’s epidemic coping model which stresses “Four-Early” measures – early detection, early reporting, early quarantine, and early treatment of COVID-19 cases.

China is also the largest supplier of vaccines to the developing world. Their economy is not doing so bad either.

They are  long-term thinkers too.

55 comments on “China reports zero local symptomatic Covid-19 cases for first time in weeks”

Comment numbers have changed to permanent references. Older quoted numbers may no longer identify the same comment.

  1. 1

    Love to know a bit more about the early treatment, drug therapies, supplements, success rates etc.

    That could be a game changer.

  3. 3

    There is plenty of material suggesting the Chinese authorities have lied about many aspects of Covid. This is an authoritarian regime, and any data they release is hard to take seriously.

    1. 3.1

      The Covid-19 genome sequence 'China' revealed on 10/Jan/2020 was taken seriously.

      Baric hopes this virus’s discovery and the response to it illustrate the speed at which scientists can move by working together. “One of the things that’s sad is that the public doesn’t realize how incredibly competent the public health and the basic science community are at going from a newly discovered virus to a tremendous amount of capacity to trace and try to control its spread,” Baric says.
      https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/chinese-researchers-reveal-draft-genome-virus-implicated-wuhan-pneumonia-outbreak

      https://www.asianscientist.com/2020/02/topnews/china-coronavirus-covid-19-study/

      https://journals.lww.com/cmj/Fulltext/2020/05050/Identification_of_a_novel_coronavirus_causing.3.aspx

        1. 3.1.1.1

          I was suggesting that the idea “…any data they [the Chinese] release is hard to take seriously” might be misleading, but I understand the impetus to simplify.

          From the first link:

          But even if they had been 100% transparent, that would not stop the Trump administration downplaying the seriousness of it. It would probably not have stopped this developing into a pandemic.

          From the second link:

          The preprint study, which is yet to undergo the scientific quality-control process of peer review, was published on the medRxiv early release service.

          Not questioning the research, but has anyone else, i.e. has that study been peer-reviewed yet?

          From an author of the third link:

          "It's very different to what we've seen here in the UK, and the factors we had to consider – the economy, health, care homes – lots of things. In China they only considered one thing, and that was shut down now."

          I suppose that might seem a reasonable response if you considered keeping citizen safe to be an important function of government.

          I believe that some Covid-19 data from China contains inaccuracies, and that some of these inaccuracies are likely deliberate. But, if you believe that "all politicans lie", then that's only to be expected, no?

          1. 3.1.1.1.1

            "I believe that some Covid-19 data from China contains inaccuracies, and that some of these inaccuracies are likely deliberate. But, if you believe that "all politicans lie", then that's only to be expected, no?"

            IMHO there is ample evidence that there has been misinformation, and that it has been deliberate. Of course your last sentence is true, but here's the thing. In a functioning democracy there are checks and balances. There are opposition parties, a free and independent media, and a free exchange of ideas amongst it's citizenry. In China the state is the single source of truth. There is little counter opinion, and what there is ruthlessly suppressed.

            1. 3.1.1.1.1.1

              IMHO there is ample evidence that there has been misinformation, and that it has been deliberate.

              Agreed; plenty of evidence of deliberate misinformation, and that this misinformation has been quite effective, at least within China.

              In a functioning democracy there are checks and balances.

              Yes, agreed – checks and balances such as "The Hollow Men" and "Dirty Politics – How attack politics is poisoning New Zealand’s political environment"

              Just as well Hager lives in a functioning democracy, free from intimidation, eh.

                1. 3.1.1.1.1.1.1.1

                  Good point – Hager did have the opportunity to opine on his treatment.

                  I'm still gobsmacked that the police thought that it was reasonable to arrive like Rambo and spend 11 hours doing over my house where they found nothing they wanted.

                  It was completely and utterly over the top and it would've been depressing for everyone who works in this field if they'd got away with it.

                  I hope what this means is that people won't be more scared to be whistleblowers and more scared to be sources in the media.

                  Still have to wonder why police at the time considered this appropriate; no doubt there are plenty of reckons.

      1. 3.2.1

        https://thestandard.org.nz/china-reports-zero-local-symptomatic-covid-19-cases-for-first-time-in-weeks/#comment-1811090

        Here's a few more:

        https://www.livemint.com/news/world/china-continues-to-deceive-about-covid-19-outbreak-say-experts-11612656469297.html

        https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/wuhan-lab-coronavirus-leak-world-health-organization-biden-20210805.html

        https://www.timesofisrael.com/china-wasnt-alone-but-it-took-lead-role-spreading-lies-about-covids-origins/

        https://www.itv.com/news/2021-01-18/wuhan-medics-undercover-we-were-told-to-lie-about-covid-19-outbreak

        That's just a few.

        1. 3.2.1.1

          I'm not sure why you've linked to Mike's article because it's the only place any link is offered that reports from China.

          You've offered nothing but msm fiction e.g. "Professor Stanley Rosen told Fox News"

          How can you be so gullible?

          1. 3.2.1.1.1

            Professor Stanley Rosen:

            "China is very opaque when it comes to transparency, so it's always hard to know how accurate their reported statistical data is, and there seems to be little question that when Covid first broke out in Wuhan, and for a considerable time afterwards, the number of deaths from Covid was seriously underreported," he said.

            Dr Stephen E. Hawes, the chair of the University of Washington's epidemiology department expressed that China was "rightfully criticized for withholding information globally" early on in the pandemic "and also for suppressing information and being slow to respond to the outbreak within China."

            Now a new study of Chinese medical, media and bureaucratic reports points to a massive cover-up of the outbreak's severity. A new study accuses Beijing's reported number of infections and deaths from the pandemic of lacking any credibility. And that will have had a severe impact on how the world responded to the outbreak.

            Amid all the confusion, it became clear that one man's voice had been silenced where it shouldn't have been. Li Wenliang has become known internationally as the "whistleblower" doctor who tried to warn colleagues about a Sars-like virus. Dr Li died on 7 February after it came to light that he had been investigated for "disturbing social order" by "making false comments".

            The Committee to Protect Journalists notes that in Wuhan, the authorities "arrested several journalists for coverage that threatened the official narrative of Beijing's response". CPJ says three are still in prison. And given YouTube is blocked in China, few in the country know of their impact.

            Chinese medics have been filmed undercover for the first time admitting they realised coronavirus could be transmitted between humans but were told by the government to keep quiet

            Yep, they've lied all right, pretty much from the outset. And they have suppressed their lies with the brutal application of a state apparatus that is pervasive and a threat to not just the people of the PRC but the rest of the world.

    3. 3.3

      All MS needs to do is convince the remaining 99.9% of the worlds population who think the Chinese government are a pack of cynical liars

    1. 4.1

      Interesting link – thanks Ad. I wasn't a fan of Sweden's Covid-19 pandemic strategy, but they're now in the "Countries that are nearly there" group, whereas Denmark, Finland and Norway are all in the "Countries that need to take action" category.

      Interesting too that Peru, the country that has by far the highest official number of Covid-19 deaths per million (5,908 deaths per million, i.e. ~0.6% of the population), is currently in the "Countries that are nearly there" group.

      What group a country is in will change over time. It's up to NZers whether NZ moves from the "Countries beating Covid-19" group to join Australia in the "Countries that need to take action" category.

      Unite against COVID-19
      https://covid19.govt.nz/

    2. 4.2

      How is it that China, with 35 new cases,is one of those countries that are almost there trailing behind NZ (winning)with 15 new cases, and where China has fewer overall cases than NZ?
      Worldometer numbers so not strictly accurate for today

      And where the population numbers are so vastly different.(China being the most populous country in the world)

      China has 3 deaths per million , whereas NZ has 5

      1. 4.2.1

        Rather points to the foolishness of holding up China as any kind of useful comparator to New Zealand's situation, doesn't it.

        1. 4.2.1.1

          I dunno , the four earlies look like a good strategy for anywhere, plus an efficient vaccine rollout.
          We do well to learn from others’ success.

              1. 4.2.1.1.1.1.1

                A pretty meaningless comparison given New Zealand's population fits into that of China 260 times, with vast differences in background population morbidity.

                How many days has China been without Covid19 infection since January 2020, when compared to New Zealand? That's the obvious inference of the post.

                1. 4.2.1.1.1.1.1.1

                  I'm more interested on how each hotspot in such a vast country responds to each outbreak

                  I'm interested in their strategies, and their results.

                  Given their population and their geography, I'm not surprised they have localised outbreaks and localised lockdowns

                  They've had amazing success in containing and dealing with those outbreaks

                  Being so huge population wise and geographically with 14 bordering countries is not an advantage when dealing with covid

                  All credit to them

                    1. 4.2.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1

                      Let us refer back to the original argument and see what the Lancet says

                      "In a press conference in September, Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, offered “deepest congratulations…to the front-line health workers in China and the population who worked together tirelessly to bring the disease to this very low level”."

                      As far as containing and dealing with the outbreak,

                      "“The speed of China's response was the crucial factor”, explains Gregory Poland, director of the Vaccine Research Group at the Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minnesota, USA). “They moved very quickly to stop transmission. Other countries, even though they had much longer to prepare for the arrival of the virus, delayed their response and that meant they lost control”. "

                      https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30800-8/fulltext

    3. 4.3

      At almost a thousand new cases a day for Sweden being "almost there", that site is a study in why charts need labelled axes.

  5. 5

    I know people are sceptical about China with their anti bias, but China can beat it by paying the peoples expenses in lockdown and providing them with food just as a good Communist Country can do , definately not like fend for yourself Capitalists. Nothing wrong with benign authoritarianism. Suck it up.

    1. 5.1

      Ahh the foolish left who just beg for 'benign authoritarianism'.

      Which rights under New Zealand’s Bill of Rights would you surrender to be more like China, and please be specific? Just cross off those ones you don't like which are specified in our Bill of Rights:

      • The right not to be deprived of life
      • The right not to be subjected to torture or cruel, degrading or disproportionately severe punishment
      • The right not to be subjected to medical or scientific experimentation without consent
      • The right to refuse any medical treatment
      • Democratic and civil rights including the right to vote, right to be elected
      • Freedom of thought, conscience and religion and adopt opinions without interference. That also goes for religious belief.
      • The right of peaceful assembly. The right of association. The right to freedom of movement and residence in New Zealand. The right to leave New Zealand.
      • The right against unreasonable search and seizure, the ability to instruct a lawyer, and the right to have the validity of your arrest tested without delay.
      • When deprived of liberty, the right to be treated with humanity and respect for inherent human dignity.
      • Whole bunches of rights that ensure a fair trial.
      • A whole independent state funded entity who will stand up to defend your human rights.
        1. 5.1.1.1

          Almost none of the human rights we enjoy are available in China.

          Now, I know you're up for the mental challenge you've been set.

          Get your red marker pen out and cross the ones you want out.

          1. 5.1.1.1.1

            You just stick to your anti Communist stance. I will always support Marxist/ leninist Communism. China may have wandered away from that for now but eventually may return, but even China today is way ahead of any Capitalist multi party/ one system state of exploitation, like I said, suck it up, case closed.

            1. 5.1.1.1.1.1

              If you are living in New Zealand and are not prepared to show which human rights you would sacrifice to sustain your ideology, then you are simply a coward.

                1. 5.1.1.1.1.1.1.1

                  Let's see.

                  45 million dead from Chinese Communist Party resource direction. All painfully documented over many years.

                  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/sep/05/maos-great-famine-dikotter-review

                  要完成计划，就要大减项目。1078个项目中还应该坚决地再削减，削减500个。平均使用力量是破坏大跃进的办法。大家吃不饱，大家死，不如死一半，另一半人吃饱。

                  To complete the plan, we need to drastically cut projects. The (existing) 1,078 projects should be further, determinedly cut, by another 500. Using our power (resources) averagely is a way to sabotage the Great Leap Forward. “When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death. It is better to let half the people die so that others can eat their fill.”

                2. 5.1.1.1.1.1.1.2

                  You call me coward, I call you Dickhead. Who will get moderated?

                  You will. Ad's an author, different rules apply. Whereas a commenter calling an author a dickhead will get moderation attention because it looks like flaming and that leads to us having to waste our time sorting it out. If you think Ad's argument is that of a dickhead explain how it is.

                  1. 5.1.1.1.1.1.1.2.1

                    Very democrapit
                    Ad is sucked in by western
                    Anti China propaganda which can be refuted if you bother to look at an opposite point of view, which he doesn’t, makes him a dickhead.

          2. 5.1.1.1.2

            As soon as NZBORA was passed the Crown set out to obliterate its application by vigourously defending breaches in the courts. Geoffrey Palmer's White Paper recommended an entrenched BOR and system of supreme law, but we ended up with a half-arsed piece of standard legislation that allowed the government to take regular swings at through strong advocacy from the biggest and most resourced law firm in the country, not to mention NZ being so small that all those fuckers from crown law, the judiciary and the politicians would hang together at the Wellington Club deciding cases the night before. NZBORA was held out as our great protector against the excesses of the State. The reality is that governments would see it as the rogues' charter and so take every opportunity to cut it to pieces. As soon as Lord Cooke of Thorndon left the scene it became the wild west. People think NZ's this wonderful example of a country embracing concepts of democratic freedoms and protections. Sure, the Act's still there, but governments, with the help of the judiciary, have dealt to it so badly it's barely recognisable today.

        1. 5.1.2.1

          It’s a remarkably similar question to those lefties in the early 1950s who continued to support Soviet Russia after Khruschev denounced Stalin, and all the frank evidence of starvation, massacres, brutal camps and liquidation of human rights went on there.

          You get a pretty good comparison of how much better our western human rights protections are from China, through their fast and resolute removal Hong Kong over the last 24 months, with the law set out here:

          https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/30/controversial-hong-kong-national-security-law-comes-into-effect

          and the violations detailed here – as well as in every non state-controlled media outlet for multiple years:

          https://www.cecc.gov/publications/commission-analysis/rapid-deterioration-of-human-rights-in-hong-kong-after-passage-of

          Go through those step by step and see how we compare.

          You can check out their crimes against human rights in multiple editions of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International which publish annual reports on China. You can look those up for yourselves.

          These and hundreds more reports are simply detailed in the footnotes here:

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China

          Bunches more are detailed in the Journal of Health and Human Rights:

          https://www.hhrjournal.org/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwjo2JBhCRARIsAFG667XZxoarER4k7fo6W1vlOEb_UTEz9XRImX8h1Ajgolg85RKA9AuP-ycaAmJPEALw_wcB

          And you can see the alternative history of what could have happened, if you read the memoirs of Zhao Ziyang who was the senior CCP leader meeting with the Tianenmen students:

          https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/05/28/an-alternative-history-of-china/

          Instead we have this, the worst period for human rights in mainland China since the Tianenmen massacre.

                1. 5.1.2.1.1.1.1.1

                  Brigid, Ad has misspelled Tiananmen, but he's no 'massacre denier'.

                  There is “credible” evidence that a state-sanctioned massacre of Chinese citizens occured in response to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Your " There was no 'massacre' " stance/belief undermines your credibility – don't understand why you have this blind spot. Absent evidence for no 'massacre', we can agree to disagree.

                  A massacre is the killing of multiple individuals and is usually considered to be morally unacceptable, especially when perpetrated by a group of political actors against defenseless victims. The word is a loan of a French term for "butchery" or "carnage".

                  The 1989 Tiananmen Square protests
                  The protests started on April 15 and were forcibly suppressed on June 4 when the government declared martial law and sent the People's Liberation Army to occupy parts of central Beijing. Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundred to several thousand, with thousands more wounded.

                  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_events_named_massacres

  7. 7

    From the earliest days when Mandarin speakers with an ear to Chinese social media, heeded the warnings of Mainland whistle blowers like Dr Li Wenliang, at a time when China was still trying to ignore and suppress all news of the outbreak.
    If there is one country that takes the virus seriously, (other than China)*, it is Taiwan.

    Taiwan's President kicks off rollout of island's first domestically produced Covid-19 vaccine

    CNN Digital Expansion 2017. Ben Westcott

    CNN Expansion 05/11/21 Eric Cheung

    By Ben Westcott and Eric Cheung – CNN, August 23, 2021

    ……Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen received her first shot of the island's homegrown Covid-19 vaccine on Monday, a public show of support for the new drug which is central to plans for inoculation self sufficiency amid low immunization rates and struggles to obtain vaccines from overseas.

    Monday's island-wide rollout of the Medigen Covid-19 vaccine, developed by Taipei-based Medigen Vaccine Biologics Corporation, comes after the drug was approved for emergency use last month by Taiwanese authorities for anyone above 20 years old, with at least 28 days between the two doses.

    The vaccine has yet to complete phase 3 clinical trials and no efficacy data is available……

    https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/23/asia/tsai-ing-wen-covid-vaccine-taiwan-intl-hnk/index.html?

    *(which only began acting after whistle blowers like, Li Wenliang exposed and embarrassed the communist authorities, paying the ulttimate price, for his courageous stand.)

  8. 8

    Yes, you can follow the daily numbers published on the Chinese NHC site

    http://www.nhc.gov.cn/xcs/yqfkdt/gzbd_index.shtml

    Remember, they only report symptomatic cases (so not directly comparable to our numbers). There was a new case yesterday in Henan 本土病例1例（在河南）after no local cases nationwide the previous day. They still have some time to go, before they can consider themselves out of the woods.

    It has been a huge effort, involving lockdowns and mass testing. It was the worst outbreak since early last year and spread to many cities.

    From that, and also from the effort expended in Taiwan we know that squashing this outbreak is possible but it won't be easy.

    New Zealand can't follow exactly China's model (or Taiwan's). There is good reason to expect that our level 4 settings along with our beefed up testing and tracing capability will work well, and we should see the numbers peak this week.

  9. 9

    "And just as the Ningbo container terminal re-opens fully after a pandemic shutdown, Shanghai's main airport is closing for the same pandemic-exposure reasons. This too will roil cargo freight to and from China, although there are plenty of alternatives. And there seems to be no end in sight for the cost of shipping."

    https://www.interest.co.nz/news/111913/world-trade-record-levels-us-factory-prices-inflate-higher-commodity-prices-turn-back

    Pays not to get ahead of yourself….the situation is fluid

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