“We will continue to gain experience and be adaptive to new developments to keep an orderly and smooth flow of goods and personnel.”
04:52
Breaking down Hong Kong’s dynamic zero Covid-19 strategy
Li did not give a timeline for the changes.
China, the world’s second-biggest economy, has largely sealed off its borders, allowing few international flights and imposing strict travel restrictions.
The measures have kept China’s official tally of Covid-19 infections and deaths low but at the same time the country has been criticised for affecting the recovery of the global supply chain, with any small disruption in the country due to China’s zero-Covid target likely creating ripples across the world.
Li’s remarks came as China fights an uphill battle against the more transmissible Omicron variant.
The outbreaks have spread to about 20 provinces and provincial-level cities with clusters in several schools.
In Jilin province, which has recorded more than 1,000 cases in this outbreak, the provincial capital Changchun announced residential areas closed as the city conducted three rounds of citywide testing. Neighbouring Jilin City sacked a Communist Party secretary of a college, where there was a cluster, for mismanaging the outbreak.
Li defended the zero-Covid response, saying China needed to study the virus because it was still mutating two years after the pandemic started. The development of vaccines and effective therapeutics also needed to be improved, he said.
“The international community should now unite and cooperate, and watch out for each other. Be more understanding and tolerant to create conditions for the world to return to normalcy,” Li said.
06:21
‘Stealth Omicron’: How dangerous is the pandemic’s new highly infectious strain of Covid-19?
China’s approach – now characterised as “dynamic zero-Covid” and intended to cut off each chain of infection instead of eliminating all cases – is supported by many public health heavyweights in China even though many countries have pivoted to a strategy of “living with the virus”.
Gao Fu, a delegate of the CPPCC and director of Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, said the transmissibility of the Omicron variant had increased with lower virulence, but the virulence was not as low as influenza, nor should it be treated as such.
“A sick tiger is still a tiger. It’s not a cat … I think the virus is still adapting to humans and it’s changing,” Gao told China News Service.
“I personally believe it’s not time to estimate the past winter as the last winter with Covid-19, or that the virus has become ‘acceptable’ to humans.”
Zhang Boli, a National People’s Congress deputy and a traditional Chinese medicine expert heavily involved in Covid-19 control in China, said China must still stick to zero-Covid and not take the virus lightly.
“Some people, influenced by the Covid response in the West, feel we should also relax controls, but I think we should continue with zero Covid with an emphasis on being precise in control and not disrupt the economy or life,” Xinhua quoted Zhang as saying on the NPC sidelines earlier this week.
“Only China can achieve this, not the West. We should not be influenced by them.”
