OpinionCoronavirus: is aggressive containment the most appropriate policy response?

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.

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.

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.