China is imposing strict lockdowns to contain COVID, but there's a cost

Moreover, lockdowns only work if they are absolutely enforced for long periods of time, says Tamer Oraby, a statistician at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley, who studies how outbreaks spread: “With short term lockdowns, the disease is probably going to keep spreading between individuals of a household for a while. If we suddenly remove the lockdown, those people are going to go outside again and start spreading the disease once more.”

Such rigid methods can be problematic to maintain as new clusters emerge across China each week.

“I’m pretty confident that China can contain this wave of epidemic. But if it takes a long time to contain the epidemic or [outbreaks] happen repeatedly, I think it will be more evidence that China needs to consider other methods,” says Dr. Jennifer Bouey, an epidemiologist at the RAND Corporation.

She questions “whether the completion of testing and quarantines is feasible when the delta transmission is so fast,” because there is no guarantee China can contact trace and quarantine people in time before they infect others.