China no longer requires mass COVID-19 testing

Despite insisting on the policy of “no COVID-19 dynamic”, but China continued to make adjustments in domestic anti-epidemic measures, no longer requiring localities to conduct mass testing when the epidemic broke out.

China on March 22 revised its guidelines on nucleic acid testing. In this 3rd version, the Chinese health authorities no longer require localities to conduct “testing of the whole population” but only testing by region. The purpose of these changes according to China is to make epidemic prevention measures “more targeted” under the “dynamic no COVID-19” policy in the context of the worst outbreak. in two years has now spread to 28/31 provinces and cities in this country.

Ms. Tieu Nha Huy (Jiao Yahui), Director of the Health Administration Department of the National Health Commission of China, said: “In the past, using ‘the whole population’ was easy to confuse people with large-scale testing across the city, it was easy for people to think that we were doing it all over the place. This time, we’ve revised it to ‘area’, which means we put more emphasis on scientifically demarcating and correcting the scope of testing.”

According to the official, the new guidance also sets a strict deadline for the designated area for testing to be completed within 24 hours. This modification is considered a response to the stealthy variant of Omicron, which can spread rapidly.

Under the new guidelines, all required districts, including megacities with more than 10 million inhabitants, must also complete a nucleic acid test on residents of a designated area within 24 hours.

Immunologists say that the test time requirement will be easy for megacities like Beijing and Shanghai, but for second-tier megacities it will require a strong administrative capacity. stronger.

Previous guidance issued in September 2021 required cities with less than 5 million inhabitants to complete nucleic acid testing within two days, while cities with more than 5 million were expected to complete within two days. three days.

Under the new rules, China will no longer conduct city-wide testing during an outbreak. If the risks are under control, this range can be narrowed down to an area based on the sources of infection. The ultimate goal is to ensure that all positive cases are found in people in quarantine rather than in the community as a whole.

Chinese medical experts said that the detection of a large number of asymptomatic cases due to the Omicron stealth variant has caused many difficulties for the “dynamic zero Covid” policy, so China needs to regulate Adjust prevention measures to be more targeted and scientific.

Liang Wannian, head of China’s expert group on COVID-19 response, said that the key to targeted measures lies in “quickness and efficiency”. He reaffirmed that, in the context of the complicated and severe epidemic situation, China needs to adhere to the “dynamic no COVID-19” policy, because it has the foundation, conditions and capacity to implement the policy. This book has proven to be “effective and in line with Chinese realities”.

It is known that China has reported more than 41,000 positive cases in the community from March 1 to March 21, involving 28 provinces and cities. In particular, Jilin province, northeast of this country has reported more than 1,000 new cases daily for 8 consecutive days since March 14. Today (March 23), mainland China has nearly 5,000 more positive cases, of which more than half are in Jilin.