'Like keeping a lid on boiling water': Rutland's health boss on the problem China faces with Omicron
Parts of Hong Kong have begun opening up again after wave of COVID-19 infections
With recent reports of Shanghai residents not being able to leave their neighbourhoods after a Covid-19 outbreak, we asked Rutland's Public Health director Mike Sandys about China's pandemic policies.
'That (zero-tolerance) does appear to have kept Coronavirus at bay in China, compared to those countries that have been a bit more liberal in terms of their lockdown policies. There's a balance there against the freedom of the individual and the restrictions on liberty...', said Mike Sandys.
China have relaxed some restrictions recently, with Hong Kong seeing Disneyland re-opened and restaurant dining resumed - now the city's seen respite after it's worst outbreak of Covid-19.
Less of a step has been taken in Shanghai, where residents had to stay in homes to wait out the surge in cases - with only people in the places reporting no new cases in the last 7-14 days now being allowed out of their homes.
Chinese authorise have since been reluctant to lift restrictions until all outbreaks were none-existent.
An effective policy that comes with a cost
Leicestershire and Rutland's Public Health Director Mike Sandys summarised that China's zero-tolerance policy around COVID was effective at keeping infections down - but at the expense of people's freedom:
'They have a slightly more authoritarian society can I say, than ours, and that's enabled them to do those policies. It has kept Covid low. But there's a balance between what the state tells you to do and what people are trusted to do themselves.'
He added that with Omicron's transmissibility rate being 10-15 times higher than the original variant, it's difficult for any policy to completely negate an outbreak:
'However tight you try and keep a lid on a boiling pan of water or something, eventually the steam just starts leaking out. It's (Omicron) just so rampantly transmissible that you're really going to have to go in hard and early to get on top of it - that's obviously what China are doing, but it does come at a cost.'