Covid

China’s lockdowns are ineffective in the long run says White House medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci

Workers wearing personal protective equipment (PPE), install a barricade around a residential area under lockdown while a resident looks out from a window, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Beijing, China, May 4, 2022. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

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Lockdowns in Shanghai have been going on for over a month now, and officials say they will continue until the community reaches zero COVID cases for three days straight. Things are also getting stricter in Beijing. For example, schools are being suspended for another week, and dining in at restaurants has been banned. Subway stations have also been shut down.

According to Dr. Fauci, though, these punishing rules are probably ineffective in containing the highly-infectious omicron variant. He added that If China doesn’t start using vaccine shots other than its homegrown ones, like Sinovac, which are believed to be less effective, the lockdown won’t bring any good social or economic outcomes.

Key comments:

Lockdowns must be used to prepare the population to prevent the future spread of infection, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House medical adviser, on the German Maischberger show. Doing a lockdown and nothing else is a strategy that doesn’t work, he said.

“The widespread use of mRNA-based vaccines is the only effective way China can achieve high immunity to Covid-19 and avoid repeated, painful lockdowns,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Lei Zhong and Sam Fazeli in a note to clients.