China: COVID-19 Vaccines – Announcements/Regulatory Actions/Deployment

[We did not identify official announcements about China’s COVID response in general, or in Shanghai, Beijing or other China locations, leading us to include these reports/observations from the general media below. See China CDC below for additional announcements]

The World Tries to Move Beyond Covid. China May Stand in the Way.
Xi Jinping has redoubled his country’s efforts to control the virus, even as a growing number of leaders call on Beijing to change course.
By Alexandra Stevenson
The New York Times, May 13, 2022
5/13/2022 2:06AM

Locked down Shanghai aims to eliminate Covid over the next week
Text by: Oliver FARRY | Lou KISIELA | Antoine MOREL | Yan CHEN
France 24, 13/05/2022
Shanghai has been under complete lockdown for six weeks now. Around 26 million inhabitants have been confined to their homes and the government has been adamant in its pursuit of zero Covid cases.
However, the goal of zero cases has yet to be reached. The World Health Organization says China’s strategy is unsustainable but Chinese President Xi Jinping is not letting up. This week, health measures were further tightened in China’s economic capital.
“We have to transfer you. You have been named as a contact case. Open up or we will knock the door in!” said one of the health workers to a resident of a building that was condemned due to the presence of a Covid case.

China tightens curbs on overseas travel as part of Covid-19 battle
:: Immigration authorities say they will tighten restrictions on ‘non-essential’ travel and passport approvals
:: The measures were announced following last week’s meeting of the top leadership, where they doubled down on the zero-Covid policy
Phoebe Zhang and Guo Rui
South China Morning Post, Published: 13 May, 2022

Can Xi Jinping vanquish Covid without crushing China’s economy?
The Big Read Chinese economy
In a crucial political year, a series of open-ended lockdowns have heaped pressure on struggling businesses
Sun Yu in Zhengzhou and Tom Mitchell in Singapore
Financial Times, May 12 2022

Xi’s strongman tactics need flexibility to tackle Covid
The economic fallout of China’s lockdowns looks set to be profound
Opinion
The editorial board
Financial Times, May 11, 2022

China Censors WHO Chief’s Call to End Covid-19 Strategy Dubbed Unsustainable
Move to muffle global health body’s criticism shows Xi Jinping’s zero tolerance for public debate
By Rachel Liang
Wall Street Journal, May 11, 2022
SINGAPORE—China’s censors blocked rare public criticism of its zero-Covid strategy by the World Health Organization from social media Wednesday, as officials in Shanghai insisted there would be no change to policies that have locked tens of millions of people in their homes for weeks.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said China’s inflexible approach to Covid-19 needs to adapt to the evolving nature of the virus.

“When we talk about the zero-Covid strategy, we don’t think that it is sustainable considering the behavior of the virus now and what we anticipate in the future,” Mr. Tedros told a briefing on Tuesday, adding that the WHO has been discussing the issue with Chinese experts.

The remarks pit the global health agency against Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who has hitched his reputation to the strategy of strict border controls, widespread lockdowns and mass quarantining of infected people. Mr. Xi last week reiterated China’s unwavering commitment to its Covid-19 approach and pledged to “resolutely fight” any questioning of official policies.

An article that included a video clip of Mr. Tedros’s remarks posted on the United Nations’ WeChat account was widely shared on the microblogging platform. The clip was quickly removed and the article was tagged as “violating laws and regulations”—meaning it could still be read but not shared. On Weibo, China’s Twitter, searches for #Tedros no longer worked as of Wednesday evening local time.
The incident helps illustrate the vanishing space for debate over China’s coronavirus controls, even for global organizations.

There was no acknowledgment of the WHO’s comments in major state-run media Wednesday, though a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry called for Mr. Tedros to avoid making what he called irresponsible comments.

At Shanghai’s daily Covid-19 briefing, Wu Huanyu, deputy director of the city’s center for disease control, reaffirmed that China will stick to the policy now dubbed “dynamic zero.”

“Shanghai has a large population of older people, who are more vulnerable to Covid,” he said. “Dynamic zero is achievable.”…