Hundreds of flights were canceled this Friday, November 26 in Shanghai. Some schools have been closed for three confirmed local cases of Covid-19. The Chinese economic capital had not seen any new local infections since last August. The three infected were vaccinated.
With our correspondent in Beijing, Stephane Lagarde
More than 500 canceled flights from Shanghai’s two airports, outpatient services suspended at six city hospitals; it is again the so-called “zero Covid” strategy that applies as it does every time a positive case is reported in China.
Interprovincial travel has also been cut off. Because the three Shanghainese infected last week, returned from a weekend in the historic city of Suzhou, in the province of Jiangsu. They had followed a complete vaccination course, said health authorities at a press conference Thursday evening. According to South China Morning Post, the three friends are said to have dined with two men from Hangzhou, in neighboring Zhejiang province, who also tested positive.
“Dynamic zero covid”
Six cases, and the battle is underway! As in Beijing, where health vigilance measures have been reinforced in the run-up to the Winter Olympics, the 25 million Shanghai residents are invited to respect barrier gestures. Some 519 contact cases have been placed in isolation, nearly 55,000 people have tested negative. A strategy that has so far allowed China to contain the spread of the virus on its territory.
” We may encounter similar battles again in the future “, warned Zhang Wenhong, specialist in infectious diseases quoted by the SCMP. ” It is about reaching a “dynamic zero Covid” as soon as possible, with the least impact on the public “Said the epidemiologist, who heads a group on the treatment of Covid-19 in Shanghai.
A strategy of non-tolerance with the virus, now qualified as ” dynamic », Because it is more targeted. With some exceptions, as in Lanzhou in the north-west of the country last month, it is no longer entire megalopolises that are confined, but residences, even neighborhoods where the confirmed have passed. These new infections were discovered just days after the extinction of an outbreak of the Delta variant, which appeared in mid-October and which infected 1,300 people in 21 Chinese provinces.
So you have to start all over again. For now, the source of this new outbreak is not known. The concern is probably heightened for the health authorities, following the discovery of two carriers of the new South African variant to Hong Kong.
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