Crowds on the Great Wall in Beijing Photo:VCG

China has once again entered a state of zero new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases in the country. The latest round of outbreak, which originated in Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu Province, had a significant impact on economic and social activities. It severely curbed the tourism economy during summer vacation and disrupted the travel plans of many families. But we overcame the vigorous attack of the Delta variant, further enriching our capabilities and experience in our dynamic approach of vigorously clearing new COVID-19 cases.

The Mid-Autumn Festival holiday and the National Day golden week are approaching. Whether we can resume normal tourist activity during this period is a test for all regions and the country's epidemic prevention and control system.

We feel that, on one hand, we should learn from the lessons of the previous round of outbreak emerged in several places. On the other, we should consider adopting active policies to encourage the full recovery of tourism and related industries. We should release the power and protective effect of China's dynamic approach of vigorously clearing new COVID-19 cases on economic and social activities, and constantly improve this mechanism, so that it will become a magic weapon with strong vitality and indisputable competitiveness.

China's epidemic prevention and control system has proven its efficacy in protecting the lives and heath of people and its incomparable humanitarian significance. In the past year, it has also proven its special efficiency in promoting economic recovery. Recently, as Europe and the US reopened their economy under the shelter of vaccines, they have resorted to the "herd immunity" ethics regardless of human lives lost and hoped to gain some driving forces for economic recovery.

This is a globalized era. Countries choose different prevention and control paths to not only fulfill responsibility for their people, but also compete with each other. The US and the West have lost the first half of the battle and are shirking responsibilities for their failures under the logic that "The law cannot be enforced when everyone is an offender." Ruthless reality has shaped Western society's bearing capacity of numerous infections and deaths. Those countries are trying to make economic recovery as primary criteria of a successful epidemic fight.

From a long-term perspective, the extent to which economic and social activities resume could become the direction of competition of the global anti-virus fight. As the West lost in the humanitarian race at the very beginning, it has tried to offset the significance of the humanitarian side and even play down the pandemic itself, and focused on the economy. China's dynamic zero-case approach must withstand the competition in the second half. Even from the economic perspective, we must show our advantage over the path of the US and Europe.

China's vaccination coverage is no less than that in European and American societies. The virus is mutating and there are various uncertainties in the fight against the pandemic. Chinese society has the dual protection - vaccines and anti-epidemic measures, while European and American societies only have vaccines. From a strategic point of view, the steadiness of the Chinese route is much better than the European and American approaches.

China must continue to improve the efficiency of the dynamic zero new case system and minimize its cost to the economy and society. We need to have a sense of urgency in the competition with the external world, form a precise anti-epidemic mindset, continuously improve the ability of early detection, try to accurately delineate medium- and high-risk areas, carry out regional quarantine and restrict activities and decide the time for quarantine under the guidance of epidemiology. We must integrate anti-epidemic measures with economic development and adopt science in all these decision-making and management processes.

For the National Day golden week, it is not appropriate to impose restrictions on people's movement across regions if there is no a sudden major outbreak. Instead, we should encourage people to take scientific precautions, such as wearing masks, paying attention to hygiene, and carry our various holiday activities at the same time. Even if there is a new epidemic, that is the situation we have to face. We cannot avoid it, but confront it, and further accumulate the experience of dealing with the epidemic during national holidays.

We cannot spend most of our vacations staying at home. We need to practice effective measures to deal with the occasional outbreaks of the COVID-19 during vacations. There could be some mistakes in this process, but the most important thing is that we can plug the loopholes, stay alert, and ensure that future potential risks won't hinder China's development.

The coming National Day holidays should become a new battle to improve our system of dynamically clearing COVID-19 cases. We have to try our best not to let the epidemic resurface. And if there are sporadic COVID-19 cases, we should make every effort to detect them as quickly as possible and cut off the chain of infection. If the epidemic starts to break out in a certain area, we will fight another war of annihilation against the virus. The last round of the COVID-19 spread from Nanjing to the whole country. We need to have the ability to prevent it from happening again, and such ability can only be obtained by constant practices.