Due to the increase in lawsuits across the country, authorities have closed Shanghai schools, locked up central districts in the southern technology hub of Shenzhen and entire cities in the northeast, while nearly nineteen provinces are battling local centers by delta and omigran types. .
The big city of Jilin in the Northeast is partially controlled, with hundreds of neighborhoods placed under hour-jars, an official announced Sunday. The city of Yanji, home to 700,000 people, is completely cordoned off on the North Korean border.
China, where the virus was first detected in late 2019, has adopted a zero tolerance policy for outbreaks. It responds to epidemics by using local prisons, mass screenings, and applications to control its population.
The borders of the country are almost closed.
But the record of daily cases caused by the Omigron variant undermines this approach.
“In some areas the emergency response mechanism is not strong enough, the understanding of the characteristics of the Omigron variant is inadequate (…) and the judgment is incorrect,” health official Zhang Yan admitted during a government press conference. Jill is from the province.
“This reflects the rapid increase (…) and (…) lack of clinical evidence of the virus in various regions,” he said, causing delays in hospitalization and treatment of patients.
Residents of Jill, who have reported more than 500 cases of the Omicron variant, completed their six rounds of mandatory drug trials by Sunday, local officials said. On Saturday, several hundred neighborhoods in the city were cordoned off.
Changchun, a neighboring city of 9 million people and an industrial site, was placed under one o’clock on Friday.
Jillin’s mayor and Changchun’s health official were fired from their posts on Saturday, state media reported as a sign of political compulsion imposed on local officials to deal with the explosions.
Thanks to localized locks and mass testing and its closed borders China has so far been able to keep corona virus cases at a very low level.
Zero-Govit?
But the fatigue of this harsh approach is increasingly being heard in China. Many officials are now recommending soft, targeted measures to control the spread of the virus, and economists warn that drastic measures could affect the country’s economy.
In Shenzhen, a city of about 13 million people on the border with Hong Kong, residents have expressed anguish over the escalation of diseases and the harsh response of health officials, who have locked up the Fudian district. (300,000 people).
“This is the worst after 2020,” Shenzhen resident Zhang told AFP. “The closures are so sudden that when my friend woke up in the morning she saw that her building had been sealed overnight without warning. Her boss had to send her her laptop.”
Hong Kong currently has one of the highest mortality rates in the world from the virus, with Omicron attacking its elderly, who are still reluctant to vaccinate.
Thousands of foreigners have also fled the city, mainly due to the closure of schools and stricter restrictions, reducing any crowds or traffic to near zero.
China’s health policy has generally been more targeted since the increase in cases began in February than in December, when the city of Xi’an and its 13 million people were completely locked out for two weeks.
In Shanghai, China’s largest city, authorities decided to believe in social exclusion by temporarily closing schools, businesses, restaurants and shopping malls, rather than carrying out mass isolation.
Long queues were seen outside hospitals across the city, with people rushing to get a negative Govt test.
Faced with increasing cases, the National Health Commission announced on Friday that it would introduce the use of rapid antigen testing, which would signal a relaxation of the Communist Party’s health policy.
Last week, a top Chinese scientist said that the country should try to live with the virus, as other countries have done.
But the government did not rule out the possibility of seeking harsher imprisonment.
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