European Chamber of Commerce urges China to rethink COVID policy

On Monday, the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China said it had submitted a letter to China’s cabinet outlining how the country’s COVID control measures have impacted European businesses and urging it to revise its policies, such as permitting some COVID patients to be quarantined at home.

The chamber claimed that the ‘traditional toolbox of mass testing and isolation’ could not overcome the obstacles faced by the Omicron variation in a letter dated April 8 and written to China’s State Council and Vice Premier Hu Chunhua, a copy of which was seen by Reuters and confirmed by the chamber.

‘Current steps to limit the current COVID-19 outbreak in China are causing considerable difficulties, spanning from logistics and manufacturing all the way through the supply chain within China,’ the chamber’s president, Jorg Wuttke, wrote in the letter. The letter was not made available to the public.

According to a flash survey conducted the week before by the German Chamber of Commerce in China, 51 percent of German companies’ logistics and warehousing, as well as 46 percent of German companies’ supply chains, were ‘completely disrupted or severely impacted’ by the current COVID-19 situation in China.

The chamber proposed that China’s pandemic preventive methods be revised, including permitting positive cases with little or mild symptoms to be quarantined at home and providing mRNA vaccinations to the Chinese populace.

A faxed request for response to China’s State Council was not immediately returned.

‘The European Chamber is in contact with the relevant authorities and anticipates following up on the contents of the letter as soon as possible,’ a spokeswoman for the chamber said.

China is pursuing a COVID elimination approach that include testing, tracing, and centrally quarantining all positive cases, and has imposed lockdowns in Shanghai and the northeastern region of Jilin in an attempt to contain recent outbreaks.

The lockdown restrictions have caused industries to either shut down or operate on a ‘closed-loop’ basis, in which a small number of employees remain on site to keep lines operating while outside supplies are banned. Supplier closures have, nevertheless, had an impact on some closed-loop operations.