In China's capital, mass testing becomes new normal

The approach is now being followed in most Chinese cities, all of which requires an enormous infrastructure to process millions of daily samples

“Have you eaten yet" was famously the traditional greeting favoured in the alleyways of old Beijing. The current flavour as far as greetings go for many residents of China’s capital, is "have you tested yet?"

A regularised mass testing regime, that couples the ruling Communist Party’s sprawling presence at the grassroots with a sweeping high-tech health monitoring system, has emerged as the country’s most key weapon in maintaining its “zero-COVID” status amid recurring outbreaks of more transmissible variants.

The capital has, this past week, reported zero cases on most days, recovering after a gruelling campaign against an Omicron outbreak earlier this year. But that Beijing managed to do so while avoiding the protracted, months-long lockdown in Shanghai that brought China’s financial capital to a screeching halt, has reinforced the leadership’s belief that “zero-COVID” is still an achievable goal, regardless of China being the only country in the planet still pursuing it while most other nations have returned to some normalcy and opened their borders.

President Xi Jinping said as much during a visit to Wuhan, where the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak began in early 2020, on June 29, saying that living with the virus or “herd immunity” would have left China with “unimaginable consequences”. Chinese health experts say opening up would mean mass deaths given the high number of unvaccinated elderly, looking at Hong Kong’s recent wave as a warning sign.

Early lockdowns of neighbourhoods where cases are detected is one key aspect of the strategy. But most important for detection is regularised mass testing of every resident. As Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) are seen to be both less reliable and harder to monitor, the solution was setting up a sprawling network of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) booths.

In Beijing, the booths have been set up so every resident can find one within a 10-15 minute walk. The tests are free, and the results are uploaded into every resident’s Health Kit. Most establishments require a test result within the past 72 hours for entry. This includes access to even residential compounds. The testing regime thus requires a huge mobilisation of both manpower and technology.