China did the right thing to contain COVID-19: China Daily editorial

Whether to choose to live with the novel coronavirus or to prevent it from infecting people by completely cutting the channels of its transmission? On this, China's practice differs from that of most developed countries. This is also why those countries that have chosen the way of herd immunity have long sought to cast doubts on the way China controlled the virus.

Some countries, considering the virus to be just another kind of flu, decided to lift all control and prevention measures months ago. The Omicron variant of the virus has taught them a lesson about how transmissible and devastating it can be.

Hundreds of thousands of new cases on a daily basis have once again turned the societies of many countries into a mess, and the governments of these countries have had to tighten control and prevention measures, mandating social distancing and the wearing of a mask.

The total number of infections in the United States alone has surpassed 50 million and the death toll has reached more than 800,000, with nearly 2,000 new deaths on a daily basis.

The situation in China is in sharp contrast with that in those countries.

Putting people's lives and health before everything, China has adopted strict control and prevention measures, which has won the cooperation of its people. Everyone is required to wear a mask in any public place and big data technology has been adopted to screen close contacts of the infected. Wherever a case is identified, the measures necessary to quarantine those close contacts and monitor those indirect contacts to cut off all channels for the transmission of the virus are immediately adopted.

As a result, China has generally kept the virus at bay and become the only major country in the world which has kept its economy operating as normal in the past two years. The entire Chinese society is running as it was before the pandemic.

It is no surprise that the country was the only major economy to register positive growth in 2020. The country's economy will continue to perform in a healthy and stable manner no matter what havoc the pandemic creates in the rest of the world.

This is because the Chinese government has adopted the right approach. It is also because the country's political system and institutions have made it possible for all the control and prevention measures to be implemented smoothly from the top to the grassroots.

China's excellent export performance has protruded how its success in responding to the pandemic has facilitated the development of its economy and has also brought to prominence how the failure of some major economies in their control of the pandemic has plagued their economic performance.

It is obvious that China is injecting vitality into the global economy with its success in containing the pandemic.