I think the real question is what is the plan?
By now I think it is generally agreed that there is no putting the genie back in the bottle. Even many scientists in China say there needs to be a way forward. To me, there is a sense of an aversion to total lockdown (save Shenzhen, obviously due to spillover), and the reason is to try to control the spread as much as possible, not actually eliminate it. That is my sense.
HK was a big failure in the way it is handled. Part of it has been the slow as molasses decision making of the top officials. If they were in the mainland, they would have been fired by now. Now everyone in the mainland knows what the worst case scenario is, and learning how to avoid it.
Are asymptomatic cases still being quarantined in quarantine centers in the mainland?
Asymptomatic cases are still being quarantine in quarantine centers but not in hospitals anymore.
I think the biggest lesson that the mainland China can learn from HK is that you need to vaccinate senior citizens. HK's failure to vaccinate senior citizens and immunocompromised people are the biggest cause of deaths. Mainland China vaccination rate of senior citizens is still too low compare with other countries.
Western countries and MSM are desperately trying to paint China's zero covid policy as a failure. But even until now, zero covid policy has saved countless lives. We can't dismiss the usefulness of zero covid policy.
As for a way forward, I think it is very difficult to implement a plan that can cope with covid but at the same time avoid lock down. The thinking is other provinces and cities follow Shanghai's dynamic zero policy. But other provinces and cities don't have the same resources as Shanghai has. Most of these places can't do contact tracing and mass testings to minimize the cases or do they have enough hospitals to treat and provide care to so many patients.
The best option right now is still doing lock down to eliminate cases. Buying more times to increase vaccination rate, development and deployment of new vaccines, understanding of the long term effects of covid, and testing of new treatments and drugs. Feedback from SK is mortality rate is 0.14 and 0.53 for HK, HK mortality rate is inching up.
After China has high enough vaccination rate with booster especially for elderly and deployment of new treatments and vaccines. China can experiment with more flexible dynamic zero policy(living with the virus but actively flatten the infection curve). From HK's experience, densely populated area might need to build temporary quarantine facilities for patients even after China decided to end zero covid policy.
Mass testings and quarantine are still necessary as hospitals don't have the capacity to deal with a surge. China could consider such move in winter or next spring as new variant should arrive and we should have idea if the virus would be less lethal, more contagious, and how well vaccines work against the new variant.
