by Hu Yuping is afraid.
The 43-year-old resident of central China’s Hunan province is a cancer survivor and has just learned that even though there are COVID-19 patients in her building, the two-week lockdown imposed to curb the spread of the virus is set to be lifted .
“Wear your mask and don’t go to crowded places – now we have to rely only on ourselves,” Hu wrote in his family group chat on messaging platform WeChat.
After nearly three years of a zero-COVID strategy that has sought to eliminate the virus wherever it has emerged with lockdowns, mass testing and centralized quarantine, China has suddenly begun to ease some of its toughest restrictions.
The change to a policy that has stunted growth in the world’s second-largest economy and disrupted the lives of millions came shortly after a wave of protests against the lockdown swept across the country.
The policy easing has delighted many, particularly those whose economic livelihoods have been damaged, but many are agitated about what might happen next, with health experts predicting a surge in coronavirus cases in a country where the vast majority of people have not been exposed to the virus and many older people have not received full courses of vaccine.
The zero-COVID strategy also means that since 2020, the Chinese government has been promoting the narrative of an unquestionably lethal virus and describing the rest of the world’s decision to live with it as a dangerous move.
However, it took more than a few nights for the government to begin dismantling the anti-pandemic regime it had so zealously built.
In the space of a week, the government abandoned PCR testing requirements for access to most public places, dismantled the national COVID-19 tracing app – a hallmark of China’s anti-pandemic measures – and generally relaxed the other measures that had thus constrained everyone’s daily life.
‘left out’
The sudden change has left many confused and even — for people like Hu — fearful.
People with underlying diseases or whose immune systems have been suppressed are known to be more vulnerable to COVID-19, and Hu has been treated for ovarian cancer.
She recently passed the five-year mark since the last cancer cells were detected in her body, a clinical sign that the disease has likely been suppressed, but says she is ‘extremely nervous’ about the sudden change in COVID-19 policies and it is by canceling all non-essential travel away from home so as not to “run any risk of infection”.
“Doctors say they are afraid of the side effects the vaccines might have on me,” Hu told Al Jazeera.
“But now we are left out in the open, with no vaccines and no state protection.”
Al Jazeera spoke to five immunocompromised people who are not vaccinated. All told stories of how the government had been slow and reluctant to vaccinate them over concerns about side effects.
Patients with underlying diseases now fear they don’t have enough time to get vaccinated before the virus hits their city or their building.
“Nobody rushed to get the vaccine before, but now even if we want to get the vaccine, doctors are hesitant because there is no top-down guidance,” said Ding Siyang, a dialysis patient in Kunming, a city of southwestern China, he said. “We’re all a little scared.”
The country’s large elderly population is also fearful. Despite the government’s effort to rush to vaccinate the elderly population after policy easing, only 60 percent of people over the age of 80 have been boosted according to the National Health Commission. A study conducted in Hong Kong has shown that elderly people vaccinated with Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines have sufficient protection against serious disease only after booster.
Due to the relatively low vaccination rate among vulnerable people, experts have predicted a sudden surge of cases in China’s dead of winter that could overwhelm limited medical resources in the most populous country on the planet.
In the face of the inevitable surge of COVID-19, vulnerable people aren’t the only ones who are afraid.
After the relentless messages of the last three years, there is also anxiety among the young and healthy, people who, according to conventional wisdom, should be better able to cope with the disease.
Experts have been studying the effect of prolonged lockdowns on people’s mental health ever since COVID-19 first emerged in Wuhan three years ago and the city of 8.5 million was sealed off.
The Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journals, citing the first national survey of psychological distress in China’s 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, noted that “35 percent of respondents experienced distress, including anxiety and depression.”
“School closures have been associated with negative mental health symptoms and behaviors among children and adolescents,” he added, noting that the relief when the Wuhan lockdown was finally lifted was tempered by “widespread anxiety about the ‘adaptation to routine life and the fear that virus transmission will rebound’.
Since then, sporadic but prolonged lockdowns in China have made many people “tired and depressed,” according to Xiao Lu, a psychotherapist in Shanghai.
“Being separated from friends and family out of fear of this disease that many feared is a trigger for many people,” she said.
Lu Xueqin, a 35-year-old resident of Changsha in central China, is vaccinated and boosted with Chinese-made vaccines, but finds her mind drifting back to the early days of the pandemic, when medical resources were stretched to the limit.
“I really don’t want us to go back to those days,” Lu said.
Since Wuhan in early 2020, vaccines have been developed and the virus itself has evolved. The difference between then and now is clear: the extra protection provided by a wider range of vaccines and better treatments mean that the wave of Omicron variants has been more widespread but less severe.
In China, however, Beijing’s scary portrayal of the virus from Wuhan has made it more difficult for people to face a future of living with COVID-19.
“Anxiety will almost inevitably increase for many people who previously thought that being infected with the coronavirus was almost like a death sentence,” Xiao Lu told Al Jazeera.
Even as top-level experts have taken to national television to inform the public that the new variant isn’t as lethal as the one that devastated Wuhan in the early days of the pandemic, fear is rampant.
Lu fears that unless the government updates the public more aggressively on the changing nature of the infection, many more will suffer from anxiety and even depression.
“It is scientifically studied that uncertainty further fuels anxiety among people who are prone to it [anxiety]and a change in policy without proper communication with the public will make matters worse,” he added.
Such uncertainty and fear could have long-term effects as cases rise amid looser controls.
“Currently, the epidemic in China is … spreading rapidly, and under such circumstances, no matter how strong prevention and control are, it will be difficult to completely break the chain of transmission,” said Zhong Nanshan, one of the top government health advisers. state media on Sunday.
In a survey conducted earlier this month by consultancy Oliver Wyman, among 4,000 consumers polled, fear of COVID-19 infection was the top concern among those who said they would not travel.
“You’re kidding,” Lu replied when asked if she plans to travel from her home in Changsha as the rules ease. “I can barely muster enough courage to leave my house now.”
