China records nearly 3,400 coronavirus cases in one day, highest in two years

Chinese health authorities counted nearly 3,400 cases of coronavirus on Sunday, a record number since the start of the epidemic in February 2020, and were rushing to stem the outbreaks by confining the affected areas.

Due to a spike in cases across the country, authorities have closed schools in Shanghai and locked down several northeastern cities, while nearly 19 provinces are racing to contain local outbreaks of Delta variants. and Omicron.

The large city of Jilin, in the northeast, has been partially confined, with hundreds of neighborhoods placed under bell jars, an official announced on Sunday. Yanji, a city of 700,000 inhabitants on the North Korean border, has been completely confined.

China, where the virus was first detected in late 2019, has applied a zero-tolerance policy to the outbreak. It reacts to epidemic outbreaks with local confinements, mass screening, and control of its population through tracing applications.

The country’s borders remain virtually closed.

But this record of daily cases, caused by the Omicron variant, undermines this approach.

“The emergency response mechanism in some areas is not robust enough, the understanding of the characteristics of the Omicron variant is insufficient (…) and the judgment has been inaccurate”, admitted during a press briefing of the government Zhang Yan, health official of Jilin province.

“It also reflects the rapid rise (…) of the virus in the different regions and the lack of (…) medical resources”, causing delays in admission to hospitals and treatment of patients, he said. he adds.

Residents of Jilin, which has reported more than 500 cases of the Omicron variant, had completed their six rounds of mandatory drug tests by Sunday, according to local authorities. On Saturday, several hundred neighborhoods in the city were confined.

Changchun, a neighboring city and industrial base of 9 million inhabitants, was put under a bell on Friday.

Jilin’s mayor and Changchun’s health official were removed from their posts on Saturday, state media reported, in a sign of the political imperative imposed on local authorities to tackle outbreaks.

China has so far managed to keep coronavirus cases very low thanks to localized lockdowns and mass testing and its closed borders.

– Zero-Covid? –

But the weariness of this strict approach is increasingly heard in China. Several officials are now advocating softer, targeted measures to contain the spread of the virus, and economists are warning that drastic measures are hurting the country’s economy.

Health policy has generally been softer and more targeted since the rise in cases, which began in February, than in December, when the city of Xi’an and its 13 million people were in full lockdown for two weeks.

In China’s largest city, Shanghai, authorities opted to rely on social distancing by temporarily closing schools, businesses, restaurants and shopping malls rather than carrying out mass quarantines.

Long queues were also seen outside hospitals across the city, with people rushing to get a negative Covid test.

Faced with rising cases, the national health authority announced on Friday that it would introduce the use of rapid antigen tests, which could indicate a form of relaxation of the Communist Party’s health policy.

Last week, a top Chinese scientist said the country should seek to live with the virus, as other countries have done.

But the government has not ruled out the possibility of resorting to strict confinements.

The smaller cities of Siping and Dunhua, both located in Jilin province, were thus confined on Thursday and Friday, according to official announcements.

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