China imposes COVID-like quarantine over new breakout of viral disease

Fears of another pandemic are rising after China issued a quarantine order over thousands of cases of a viral disease carried by mosquitoes.

Chinese officials reported 7,000 infections of the chikungunya disease in Foshan, a city located in the south. The disease is not usually fatal but can be very painful.

'You raise the specter of the zero COVID strategy, with its zero-tolerance approach, the mass mobilization, the surveillance.'

Health officials have ordered a "patriotic public health campaign" to aid their efforts to find and destroy mosquito breeding sites in the city. They are employing drones, mosquito-eating fish in ponds, and "elephant mosquitoes" that feed on the chikungunya-carrying mosquitoes.

Residents have been instructed to ensure there is no water stagnating anywhere in the city. Some have reported heavy-handed police efforts.

A neighborhood committee cut electricity to at least five houses for not cooperating with the order in the Guicheng subdistrict.

Some of the residents complained on Rednote, a popular app, that police were excessively enforcing orders to prevent stagnant water where mosquitoes might breed.

The disease is carried by the Aedes mosquito, which can also carry dengue and Zika. The mosquito can breed in very little water, as little as that which fits into a soda bottle cap.

China has not yet imposed the most severe quarantine policies, but many are fearful that they are coming soon.

“Essentially you raise the specter of the zero-COVID strategy, with its zero-tolerance approach, the mass mobilization, the surveillance and testing,” said Yanzhong Huang, a global health expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

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Photo by SALEH AL-OBEIDI/AFP via Getty Images

On Friday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a Level 2 travel warning for those going to the Guangdong province. There are two vaccines available to Americans against the disease, but those are not available in China.

The chikungunya virus was first identified in the 1950s in southern Tanzania. The name, translated from the Kimakonde language, means "that which bends up," which apparently refers to the painful contortions of infected people.

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