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https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/04/01/coronavirus-covid-19-china-radical- measures-lockdowns-mass-quarantines/2938374001/

This is what China did to beat coronavirus. Experts

say America couldn't handle it Kim Hjelmgaard, Eric J. Lyman and Deirdre Shesgreen

In late February as coronavirus infections mounted in Wuhan, China, authorities went door-to-door for

health checks – forcibly isolating every resident in makeshift hospitals and temporary quarantine

shelters, even separating parents from young children who displayed symptoms of COVID-19, no matter

how seemingly mild.

Caretakers at the city's ubiquitous large apartment buildings were pressed into service as ad hoc

security guards, monitoring the temperatures of all residents, deciding who could come in and

implementing inspections of delivered food and medicines.

Outside, drones hovered above streets, yelling at people to get inside and scolding them for not wearing

face masks, while elsewhere in China facial-recognition software, linked to a mandatory phone app that

color-coded people based on their contagion risk, decided who could enter shopping malls, subways,

cafes and other public spaces.

"We couldn't go outside under any circumstances. Not even if you have a pet," said Wang Jingjun, 27, a

graduate student who returned to Wuhan from the Chinese coastal province of Guangdong, which

borders Hong Kong and Macau, in mid-January to live with her elderly mother and grandparents. "Those

with dogs had to play with them inside and teach them to use the bathroom in a certain spot."

China’s zero contact: ‘It seems extreme. It works’

As the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic has moved to the USA, Chinese officials and public health

experts insist that even if President Donald Trump were to immediately adopt all the strict testing and

lockdown measures that Western scientific advisers advocate, these actions would still not be sufficient

to stem the spread of a disease that is swiftly approaching a million worldwide cases.

Mike Pompeo: Americans abroad wanting to return home should 'do so immediately'

More severe steps are needed in the USA, these officials say, although they cast doubt on

whether Americans could do what the Chinese did, for a mixture of reasons: political will and deep-

rooted cultural inclinations among them.

To help quell its outbreak, Beijing embarked on one of the largest mass mobilization efforts in history,

closing all schools, forcing millions of people inside, quickly building more than a dozen vast temporary

hospitals, deploying thousands of extra medical staff to Wuhan and the surrounding Hubei province and

meticulously testing and tracing anyone and everyone who may have encountered the virus.

It did a lot more than that.

"Lockdowns, bans on gatherings, basic quarantines, testing, hand-washing, this is not enough," Huiyao

Wang, a senior adviser to China's government, told USA TODAY in a phone interview from Beijing. "You

need to isolate people on an enormous scale, in stadiums, big exhibition halls, wherever you can. It

seems extreme. It works.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/04/01/coronavirus-covid-19-china-radical- measures-lockdowns-mass-quarantines/2938374001/

" 'No one left behind' was the slogan in Wuhan," he said. "No one."

In the USA, Trump urged Americans to avoid gatherings of 10 or more people and suggested the worst-

affected states should shutter schools, bars and restaurants.

Overall, he has left it to individual states and cities to decide whether to close businesses or explicitly

order people to stay at home, despite evidence from countries in Asia, such as China, Singapore, South

Korea and Taiwan, that aggressively limiting public gatherings and social interactions can help stop

transmission of COVID-19, when done in combination with extensive testing and tracing of the disease.

Fact check:Can Trump use the Stafford Act to order a mandatory 2-week quarantine?

Trump said he expects to see U.S. cases peak "around Easter," although his claims about how quickly the

USA can overcome the outbreak and bounce back contradict assessments from top health officials, such

as Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Fact check:Study projects coronavirus peak, then moves the dates

After New York City became the new locus of the outbreak, Trump announced Sunday an extension of

federal guidance on social distancing measures through April and issued a "strong travel

advisory" urging residents of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to refrain from nonessential travel

for 14 days to help limit the spread of the virus.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the new restrictions would help slow the

spread of the respiratory illness, which has infected more than 190,000 Americans and killed more than

4,000. The daily death toll in the USA may not dip below 100 per day before June, according to a study

by the University of Washington.

Africa's paradox: It may be the worst and best place to ride out coronavirus

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/04/01/coronavirus-covid-19-china-radical- measures-lockdowns-mass-quarantines/2938374001/

China’s nationwide response vs. America’s patchwork

Wang, the Chinese government adviser, said the example of Wuhan, where authorities have started

lifting some of their stringent anti-virus controls that kept tens of millions of people at home for two

months, illustrates that the USA and West more generally need to take far more radical virus-dampening

actions that many people outside China might find culturally, logistically and emotionally unpalatable.

"It was not just families being isolated together in Wuhan but individuals being isolated away from their

friends and families," said Andy Mok, a fellow at the Center for China and Globalization, a public policy

think tank based in Beijing.

"China's response to the outbreak was truly a nationwide response: systematic, comprehensive and

coordinated. This is why China was able to 'flatten the curve' so dramatically," he said, referring to social

isolation measures aimed at keeping the number of coronavirus infections at a manageable level for

hospitals and medical workers who would otherwise be overwhelmed with sick patients.

Poorest will suffer:Safety net health clinics cut services amid coronavirus epidemic

Mok said that even in Beijing, about 750 miles north of Wuhan, coronavirus rules were established

requiring residents to have a formal pass to get in and out of their apartment buildings and homes. At

the outbreak's height in Wuhan, nobody was allowed in or out of the city, and access to food stores was

limited to once every few days.

Video footage published by the Australian Broadcasting Corp., the country's state-funded broadcaster,

showed Chinese authorities in Wuhan welding doors to entire apartment buildings shut – with residents

inside – to enforce quarantines. The footage, collected from Chinese social media users, could not be

independently verified by USA TODAY.

Mok questioned whether Americans, raised on a diet of individualism and civil liberties that has

informed every aspect of life from travel to economic institutions, would be willing to abide by invasive

virus detection and containment methods that require a strong commitment to "collectivism" and

abridged freedoms.

Global action:Great Recession showed nations can’t fight coronavirus crisis alone

Europe has adopted some, but not all, of China’s most restrictive steps. In France, residents must fill out

of a signed attestation to justify leaving their homes or apartments. Police hand out large fines to

anyone who doesn’t follow the rules.

"It's a very clever form of social engineering for civic purposes: It forces you to think about and justify to

yourself, as well as to the world, why you are leaving the house," said Sarah Maza, a French history

professor and U.S. citizen living in France for the year.

Yang Junchao, a member of a Chinese delegation of COVID-19 doctors and medical experts assisting Italy

in halting its coronavirus infections – the worst in Europe – said its epidemic will be controlled "as long

as the Italian public cooperates."

Some American public health officials have acknowledged that to bring the virus under control – outside

of a vaccine breakthrough – actions that overstep the bounds of what most Americans would be

comfortable with, such as mass quarantines and other severe restrictions on movement, may be

necessary.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/04/01/coronavirus-covid-19-china-radical- measures-lockdowns-mass-quarantines/2938374001/

"The approach we should be taking right now is one that most people would find to be too drastic

because otherwise, it is not drastic enough," Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of

Health, said in a USA TODAY interview.

"It may be a country like China has a more top-down ability to insist on certain behavior changes. But we

ought to be able to do it in our way, in a bottom-up fashion," he said.

NIH chief Francis Collins on COVID-19:Q&A with top U.S. health official

‘Widespread discontent and dissatisfaction’ in China?

Though China's official figures show that transmission of the coronavirus has all but ended in most

of the country's regions, unverified reports and online photos circulate suggesting that China's death

toll, primarily in Wuhan, could be far higher than the 3,312 figure published by China's National Health

Commission.

The Beijing-based Caixin newspaper reported March 27 significantly elevated official cremation rates in

Wuhan, possibly indicating a more substantial death figure, though the report acknowledges the

increases were inconclusive. It is not clear how extensively China has counted asymptomatic cases,

though it is tracking them.

Trump administration officials have repeatedly condemned China's initial suppression of warnings about

the outbreak and questioned the accuracy of Beijing's infection figures.

Trump:Impeachment 'probably' distracted him from fighting coronavirus

China's central government has dismissed persistent allegations that it tried to downplay the severity of

infections, although it has not denied initially detaining whistleblowing doctors and citizen journalists in

December who tried to speak out about the mysterious virus in Wuhan. China's National Health

Commission said Tuesday it will start including asymptomatic coronavirus carriers in its daily figures.

As of Wednesday, China recorded less than half – about 82,000 – the number of U.S. coronavirus cases.

It may be bracing for a potential second wave of infections: Over the past few days, China has reclosed

some public spaces and businesses, such as movie theaters, amid spiking clusters of cases, mostly

imported.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/04/01/coronavirus-covid-19-china-radical- measures-lockdowns-mass-quarantines/2938374001/

"The Chinese are trying to paint the narrative that the model they have pursued has been a huge

success and that we are failing" because of our mode of governance, J. Stephen Morrison, director of

the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Affairs (CSIS), a Washington

think tank, said in a media briefing.

Morrison said there's significant evidence that the Chinese government’s handling of the crisis sparked

"widespread discontent and dissatisfaction," pointing to the case of Dr. Li Wenliang, who was detained

when he tried to alert other health care providers about the novel coronavirus. He died from the virus.

Concern has grown over the whereabouts of Ai Fen, the head of Emergency at Wuhan Central Hospital.

She is the doctor who first alerted Wenliang about the spread of the virus. An Australian investigation

team that interviewed Fen last week said she has disappeared, possibly detained by the Chinese

government.

Chinese doctor censured: His crime? Warning about the novel coronavirus

Heather Conley, the director of the Europe program at CSIS, said that although the response in

democratic countries such as the USA may look chaotic, there’s strength in that approach. "You have

neighbors helping neighbors, and you have states making decisions. Sometimes it’s the federal level

having to catch up with those decisions, and that’s a much more dynamic, nimble and resilient

response," she said.

PPE:Types of personal protective equipment used to combat COVID-19

Jan Renders, 29, a graduate student who was studying Chinese politics at Central China Normal

University in Wuhan and was airlifted out Feb. 1 to his home in Belgium, said the Chinese response

was "too harsh" and lacked transparency.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/04/01/coronavirus-covid-19-china-radical- measures-lockdowns-mass-quarantines/2938374001/

"In Wuhan, when everything went into lockdown, nobody could come or go, and that included patients.

The hospitals were overloaded, and I’m sure people died because they couldn’t be transported to other

hospitals, where there was room," he said, noting that German hospitals started taking coronavirus

patients from overcrowded hospitals in Italy, where more than 12,400 people have died of COVID-19,

the most anywhere.

COVID-19:These countries are doing the best and worst jobs fighting coronavirus

Edward Tse, the Hong Kong-based founder of the Gao Feng Advisory Co., a management consultancy

with roots in mainland China, said his perception is that, on the whole, most people in China supported

the government's tough measures, including systematically isolating and quarantining carriers of the

virus, even if they were from the same family or had a very mild or only suspected coronavirus infection.

"Isolation is the key," he said. "It just depends on how you do it. The Chinese government decided to do

it in a certain way. It turned out to be quite effective."

A British video blogger posted a video on China's Twitter-like Weibo platform last week that explained

how China implemented the softer side of its policy of "ling jiechu," which translates as "zero contact." It

allowed neighborhood committees to take charge of arrangements for shopping and deliveries.

Highways were made toll-free, with no limits to the number of cars on a road. For those without a car,

customized bus routes were set up and operated according to demand. Tickets could be purchased on a

smartphone app, and capacity was set at 50%. Many restaurants installed basic but effective pulley

systems to maintain employee-customer distance.

Wang, the student who returned to Wuhan from Guangdong to live with her elderly relatives, said many

people in China "have the idea, and maybe it’s a stereotype, that medical care" in the USA and Europe

is more advanced than in China.

"I am worried about places like New York City and Milan," she said. "I don’t know why the deaths are so

much higher there. I hope they will be strong and keep calm."

Hjelmgaard reported from London, Lyman from Rome and Shesgreen from Washington.