With B.C. now looking at a potential slow opening of the economy as soon as mid-May after the COVID-19 outbreak peaks, what may the path forward look like - and what are the potential pitfalls?
As COVID-19 first struck Asia in February, many Asian countries are now dealing with those questions as they are about 1-2 months ahead of the Canadian pandemic timeline. As such, Business in Vancouver is taking a closer look at a number of countries in Asia on how they dealt with the same re-opening questions that’s now facing B.C.
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Regardless of how one feels about its efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic - and there is currently no shortage of such debates - China offers perhaps the most comprehensive example of how a country could reopen after the outbreak.
That is because of two facts. One, China - where the outbreak first began in the central city of Wuhan - was the hardest-hit country by the pandemic until COVID-19 took root in the West in late March. And two, it is undoubtedly now reopen for business - albeit with some exceptions.
So how did the country get from the first point (with an official death count of 4,633, although suspected to be much higher) to being now open and operational from schools and offices to trains and public spaces?
The key word, said noted Chinese economist (and SFU graduate) Bo Chen, is “very cautiously.” That’s because while some provinces gradually ended their restrictions as early as March 9, it wasn’t until April that Wuhan itself was officially reopened. And the opening is selective; problem areas remain on lockdown within Wuhan and Hubei province because officials are concerned about a possible second wave.
“Throughout February, China was very cautious,” said Chen, now an economics professor at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology. “We were recovering very slowly, but since everything went smoothly, we lifted a lot of the restrictions in March - especially for things like people’s mobility and the supply chain.”
For controlling the outbreak after locking down Wuhan on Feb. 23, Beijing relied heavily on the country’s well-established e-commerce and mobile platforms. The systems that allowed consumers under normal circumstances to shop and conduct their daily lives almost completely through their cellphones - which allow for platforms like Alipay, WeChat Pay to link a person’s bank accounts, personal ID and other metadata directly to that person’s social-media profile - were used to track COVID cases, identify people at risk and curtail their movements.
Chen said that was done by Chinese authorities first separating the entire country into risk categories: Red (high-risk) for regions like Wuhan, Yellow (medium-risk) for regions with occasional new cases, and green (low-risk) for regions with no new cases for four weeks. People living in “green zones” are allowed to travel within the country; those in “yellow zones” are allowed movements only within their provinces. Those in red zones were the ones on the strictest lockdowns.
Citizens within the green-zones are then informed on whether they can travel by a mobile app, Chen said.
“If you need to work outside your city, you need the code,” he said, noting he applied for one in late March to leave his residence city of Shanghai to give a talk three hours away in Nanjing. “So you can apply from the app, and the government will ask you to provide your personal ID so they can trace your risk level and your medical history in the last three months. If it comes back all clean, and your city falls under one of the safe regions, then you are automatically granted a green code.”
Crossing the provincial border required the traveller to present the received green code to police handling checkpoints and a facial scan to confirm identity, but the process was easy for residents in low-risk areas, Chen said.
He also added that reopening isn’t a quick flip of the on-switch, because it simply cannot proceed that way for public safety’s sake.
“Wuhan is only at an early stage of its reopening; that means people still have to practice their social distancing and to wear masks in public,” Chen said. “People are also cautioned to not go out so frequently, unless it’s absolutely necessary. There are similar measures in places like Beijing, Heilongjiang and Guangdong, and people are still very cautious in those cities… But for citizens, once they have the green code, you can show it to the police officers or to attendants at the supermarket, and people can pass through.”
UBC Institute of Asian Research director emeritus Yves Tiberghien added in tracking reports out of China that - despite train travel now being completely open and people be able to return to work in factories - restrictions like only allowing 1,000 residents from Wuhan to enter Beijing still existed for a time, while air travel remains limited. Tiberghien also said some Wuhan neighbourhoods remain on high alert and lockdowns for fears of new outbreaks.
However, he added it is true the the pandemic is now more severe outside of China than within it: “The story has now moved outside China, where the crisis has become enormous, and China is now mostly managing post-crisis.”
Chen said Chinese officials are also stepping up in a number of ways beyond the mobile-app system to ensure public safety. In addition to face masks and social distancing, government has mandated strict sanitary regulations - requiring public transit vehicles to be disinfected at least once a day.
State media shows schools reopening this week to lunch tables separated into personal spaces via plastic dividers, as well as students sitting two-desks apart in classrooms or three-seats apart in auditoriums. All were wearing masks.
Meanwhile, officials are also using its ubiquitous community associations - present in every part of the country as branches of the ruling Chinese Communist Party - to monitor local populations of symptoms and to detain patients before spreading the virus.
“Without an effective vaccine or medicine, early detection is crucial,” Chen said.
