How culture plays a vital role in healthcare perceptions...

While Beijing and other places in China are easing up Covid measures step by step, the virus is gradually entering urban areas with significant pace. Testing results within 48 hours are not required anymore from today in some public places like supermarkets or shopping malls; restaurants and other entertainment places are gradually opening up. And self-quarantine at home is becoming more practice.

Although this might differ from place to place and certainly measures are being adapted one direction or the other to local situations and developments in specific areas during coming time.

While we had not witnessed any single Covid case during the past three years in our direct vicinity, we have been noticing first cases popping up in our social environment since this week.

Even though measures are gradually easing up, most people in Beijing are bracing up and preparing for Covid. There is a run on medicines and supplements to battle Covid at home in case infection would pop up. Home delivery services from supermarkets and and e-commerce are running almost round the clock for people staying at home trying to avoid infection. Shops and restaurants are cleaning and disinfecting their locations to provide safe environments for their customers. And relatives and friends keep each other updated and help out where they can with supply of supplements or other matters.

Probably the most popular medicine to battle Covid, already out of stock in most pharmacies, is Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) formulation Lianhua Qingwen (连花清瘟, LHQW). LHQW was originally developed following the SARS outbreak in 2002 by Shijiazhuang Yiling Pharmaceutical. The formulation was listed by the National Health Commission of China in 2004 as a treatment for influenza and other respiratory disease.

Since the pandemic outbreak in 2020, LHQW has been widely used for treating mild to moderate COVID-19 cases. The TCM formulation of LHQW is based on prescriptions dating back to medical literature from the Han dynasty (202BC-220AD) including 13 herbs.

While the handling of the Covid pandemic in China is often compared to Western countries exclusively from government perspectives, often presuming people would respond similarly to a pandemic and its (course of) measures, cultural differences are usually left out. However culture plays a determining role how a society and its people perceive and deal with pandemics.

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