By P Zhang in Shanghai
“Freedom as one wanted, but at the cost of discarding hygiene” is a message posted by one Thai national on a WeChat group chat in China.
This single statement sums up the current situation of Covid-19 outbreak in China, where some estimates put as many as 40 million citizens are being infected by the virus on a daily basis.
Although the official numbers are close to 4,000 daily infections per day in a country of 1.4 billion people, the extent of the outbreak and the deaths can be seen from the overrunning of the hospitalization and the nearly a week one must wait to get cremated because the crematoriums are running 24/7 but cannot cope with the number of people who are dying.
Video clips from China are showing people who are dying from Covid-19 infection are being cremated in-front of their apartment because one can’t find crematoriums that are available to undertake a quick cremation. (See Video 1 & 2)
The outbreak in China has reached a new high after China suddenly abandoned its ‘Zero Covid’ policy just over 2-weeks ago. The move to abandon the policy came after protests started all across China from Beijing to Wuhan as people went up against the stringent Zero Covid policy of Xi Jinping. The protest started after nearly a dozen people were burnt to death in an apartment building in Urumqi, whereby the apartment building had seen doors of the units in the building locked from outside by authorities as a way to not allow residents to leave their units as infection was spreading in that building.
The death sparked a series of what is called a ‘A4’ movement whereby people were holding blank A4 paper as a sign of protest.
Xi, who is already facing some internal resistance to his unprecedented 3rd term, opted to take the protest as a sign of what could happen and took the bold step to relax the ‘Zero Covid’ policy.
The sudden relaxation of the Covid-19 policy has prompted a sudden surge in the number of infected people because China continues to rely on its Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines that it had developed during the onset of the Covid-19 crisis.
Those 2 vaccines have shown to be ineffective against the new strains of the virus such as Omicron that has spread like a wildfire.
Disrupted Lives
The cost of freedom to move has come at the expense of not moving as Lee (real name is held back due to safety concerns), a Thai restauranter has come to experience. Lee, who is married to a Chinese and has been running a restaurant, has seen her business ground to a halt after the new outbreak of Covid-19.
There are 1,000s of Thais living in Beijing and Shanghai and other cities across China with most being married to Chinese or are working in restaurants, bars, as chefs, helpers and even boxing trainers, not to mention massage venues.
Lee who used to make more than RMB 100,000/month or about 500,000 Baht/month, has seen her business come to a complete standstill as residents are too sacred to go out and get infected
“Chinese people are still afraid, and they have very little knowledge about COVID. So, no one dares to go out to eat out even during the festive seasons like Christmas or New Year,” Lee says.
Deliveries are also grounded to halt because the people who are delivering the food have also been infected to are too scared to be infected from the customers who they deliver the food to.
The information that most older generation Chinese have are usually from the state media that has until recently trumpeted the ‘Zero Covid’ policy and little knowledge was dispersed about how the messenger RNA (MRNA) vaccines have been effective in controlling the various strains of Covid-19 outbreak.
China on the other hand has no MRNA vaccine and has remained adamant not to import any of the MRNA vaccines from the western world pharmaceutical firms such as Pfizer or Moderna.
The current situation in China has prompted the likes of Lee to shutter her restaurant until at least mid-February, in hopes that by that time the situation would have calmed down and footfall to restaurants and deliveries would resume.
Return to Homeland
The Covid-19 situation in China has prompted many Thais to head back home even before the current outbreak started. Thais fed up with the way Chinese were handling the situation with cities locked down for months and supplies of basic essentials were nowhere to be seen, opted to seek ways to head back to Thailand.
The situation this time around is not that different, and many Thais are wanting to head back. Mana (again real name has been held back), who is a boxing trainer in one of the large cities in China, says that he is on his way back to Thailand until the situation in China improves.
Mana, who is paid on the hourly basis for the time he teaches his students, has seen no clients in weeks and has to live off his savings during this period, something he says is not really something he can afford with the high cost of living in the metropolitan cities, especially with no income.
Shortage of Medicines
If the shortfall in income and the hospital beds being full, and the nearly 1 week in crematorium still did not scare Thais, the lack of medication has been able to do the job.
China’s latest outbreak has in the past 20-odd days infected more than 250 million people or 18% of the country’s population, according to reports in Financial Times. The sudden surge in the number of infected people has prompted people to scramble for medicines and basic medications have flown off the shelves like never before.
Pharmaceutical firms have been ramping up their production of painkillers and antipyretics but the demand is so high that the 50% increase in production has not been able to meet the needs of the people.
Thais in Beijing and Shanghai are hopeful that the importers of these medications from Thai producers would help them but that is yet to be proven.
The Royal Thai Embassy in Beijing and the consulate in Shanghai have been approached for help but the only help the embassy can give, as per their claim, is to direct Thais to where the supplies may be available. The embassy claims that importing medicines for Thais is not something it can do and is beyond its scope of duty, because it is based on prescription for each individual.
The embassy has created a ‘Thai-Beijing April 2022’ chat group in WeChat to try to solve issues faced by Thais but the chat group only answers questions raised by members.
Tourism Hopeful Have to Wait
Those hoping that the relaxation of the ‘Zero Covid’ policy by China would spur tourism to Thailand may have to wait for a bit longer. With just about 18% of the population infected and China is yet to achieve the heard immunity, the wait for the Covid-19 wave to abate may be a bit longer.
India, a country of similar size (in population) to China, had seen the Delta variant ravage the country’s health care system for nearly 6-months before heard immunity was achieved. Like China today, India in 2021 had faced similar situation of hospitals overrunning with patients, intensive care units (ICU) beds being in shortage to a point that people were paying whatever it took to get it. Oxygen tanks and oxygen concentrates were being shipped to families from across the world with countries offering to help India with its steep shortage of medicines and medical supplies.
China’s tourists, who accounted for nearly 25% of 40 million tourists arrivals in 2019 into Thailand, were expected to be the key driver for Thailand’s tourism dependent economy. The hope was that tourists from China would start to return sometimes in early-mid 2023 but with the current situation in China, the wait for the arrival of the tourists from mainland China could be a little longer than most economists and even the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) hopes and expects.