According to Chung Nam Son, China’s leading expert on lung diseases and government advisor on Covid-19 response, the country needs to control the death rate of people infected with nCoV at 0.1% and maintain the transmission coefficient.
When the Covid-19 epidemic situation in China satisfies the above two criteria, the whole country can return to a normal state as before the pandemic.
`To achieve these criteria, we need to carry out mass vaccination, create community immunity, accept community disease control as the new normal, and develop effective drugs for Covid-19 treatment.
Chung Nam Son has mentioned several times the conditions for easing China’s anti-epidemic lockdown measures, but this is the first time he has specifically stated the criteria for the country to live with the pandemic.
Beijing residents line up to wait for a booster shot of the Covid-19 vaccine on October 30.
In a previous statement, Chung Nam Son argued that China should consider reopening based on the level of control of the global Covid-19 epidemic.
According to Johns Hopkins University data, the world death rate of nCoV infections is at 2%, down slightly from 2.2% earlier this year.
China has a low death rate, less than 0.1%.
Expert Chung said that developing effective treatment drugs is a key condition for China to normalize socio-economic activities amid the pandemic.
Chinese epidemiological experts still support the `zero Covid` strategy.
Meanwhile, some Hong Kong medical experts believe that the criteria set by Chung Nam Son are unfeasible.
According to Kim Dong Nhan, a virology expert at Hong Kong University, the Covid-19 vaccine has a high rate of preventing severe disease and death, but the ability to prevent infection is still a big unknown, especially when the virus appears.
Some parts of the world have met the criteria of low death rates thanks to wide vaccine coverage and the promotion of booster vaccinations.
A similar situation was recorded in Singapore and Hong Kong.