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Coronavirus pandemic
This Week in AsiaOpinion
Donald Low
Xun WuandDonald Low

Opinion | Coronavirus: is aggressive containment the most appropriate policy response?

  • Draconian measures taken to stem the outbreak’s spread may work in the short-term, but their wider impacts must be carefully assessed
  • In dealing with risks, included health-related ones, the appropriate policy responses are those that are proportionate

Reading Time:5 minutes
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Medical workers transport a Covid-19 patient at a hospital in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province. Photo: Xinhua
Xun WuandDonald Low
The daily number of new cases of confirmed Covid-19 infection in China has dropped sharply in the last few weeks – from more than 15,000 on February 12 to just 99 on Friday. Many Chinese provinces and cities have for days, even weeks, reported no daily increase in confirmed infections.
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There is now clear evidence that the draconian containment measures employed by the Chinese government have worked to curtail the spread of the virus in the world’s most populous country. China’s efforts have been lauded by international agencies such as the World Health Organisation, which described them as “the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history”, as well as by governments and political leaders elsewhere.

A look at coronavirus clusters across the world

While there is little doubt that China’s efforts to control the viral outbreak and save lives have been largely effective, their wider impacts must be carefully examined given the complexity of the problems inside and outside the public health arena. Indeed, such an assessment is needed not only to inform the way forward for China as the situation stabilises, but also for understanding policy responses to control the spread of the virus in places where the number of confirmed infections has increased, exponentially in some cases, in recent days.

Hidden costs

To appreciate the hidden costs of China’s containment efforts, consider how in hard hit areas of China – especially Hubei province and it capital, Wuhan – the lives of haemodialysis patients are put at risk not by coronavirus infection, but because the services they need are no longer available in hospitals where treating patients with coronavirus infection has become the only priority.

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Leukaemia patients in critical condition must forego or delay treatment because of concerns at hospitals that such patients may become either sources or victims of infection. More importantly, they are deprived of the option to seek treatment elsewhere because of the complete lockdown imposed by local governments. More lives may be lost in the name of saving lives by containing the spread of the virus.

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