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9 million amid new spike in COVID-19 cases
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China locks down city of 9 million amid new spike in COVID-19 cases
China on Friday ordered a lockdown of the nine million residents of the northeastern city of Changchun amid a new spike in COVID-19 cases in the area attributed to the highly contagious Omicron variant.To get more news about coronavirus in china update, you can visit shine news official website.
Residents are required to remain home, with one family member permitted to venture out to buy food and other necessities every two days. All residents must undergo three rounds of mass testing, while non-essential businesses have been closed and transport links suspended.
The latest lockdowns, which also include Yucheng with 500,000 people in the eastern province of Shandong, show China is sticking to the draconian approach to the pandemic it has enforced for most of the past two years, despite some earlier indications that authorities would be implementing more targeted measures.China reported another 397 cases of local transmission nationwide on Friday, 98 of them in Jilin province that surrounds Changchun, a centre of the country's auto industry. In the entire province, cases have exceeded 1,100 since the latest outbreak first struck late last week.
Just two cases were reported within Changchun itself on Friday, bringing its total to 78 in recent days. Authorities have repeatedly pledged to lock down any community where one or more cases are found under China's "zero-tolerance" approach to the pandemic.Another 93 cases were confirmed in the nearby city of Jilin that bears the same name as the surrounding province. Authorities have already ordered a partial lockdown in the city and severed travel links with other cities.
Officials of the Jilin Agricultural Science and Technology University have been sacked after a cluster of infections was reported on campus and students complained on social media that those who tested positive were being confined in school libraries and other buildings in poor conditions.The school has registered 74 confirmed cases and transferred more than 6,000 people to quarantine, according to state broadcaster CCTV.
Possible Scenarios and Policy Options
Several scenarios may emerge. China could experience scattered, modestly scaled outbreaks, perhaps in rural areas with relatively weak surveillance and health infrastructure. It could see major urban center flare-ups. Worse still, it might see waves sweep across the country.As a result, the choices before China are neither white nor black, but gray. China may lack sufficient mRNA vaccines and antivirals for now—one domestic vaccine candidate is undergoing stage-3 trials—but it is not without a mix of options to help ease itself beyond Zero-Covid and avoid the whiplash recently experienced by Australia’s population following an abrupt and clumsy reopening. Most importantly, China has the means to create a new narrative about how to better protect its population and ensure economic prosperity against an evolving virus.
Even while using intense lockdowns, mass testing, and repressive surveillance controls, the Chinese government has the capacity to redefine the problem posed by Omicron through an education and propaganda campaign on the lower true risks posed by Omicron. It could prepare the public systematically, appealing for a change of outlook and risk tolerance and arguing for a phased transition. The management of expectations will likely require a blunt acknowledgment that a difficult phase of heightened disruption, hospitalizations, and deaths may lie ahead, in certain areas, but that it can be short-lived and contained if enough prior preparations are in place to correct for shortages in staff, tests, intensive care unit (ICU) beds, and anticipated interruptions in supply chains. These measures, in aggregate, might lower the threat of panic and any attendant economic and political downsides.
Authorities can introduce some mRNA vaccines and antivirals in support of control efforts targeting the elderly and other high-risk populations and accelerate efforts to strengthen the capacities of hospitals and clinics. For the demographic that fears they are infected but are asymptomatic or only mildly ill and relatively low risk, the state can steer patients away from core health institutions and toward alternate sites for testing and care. China has the option to reduce the frequency and size of mass nucleic acid testing, redefine close contacts of Covid-19 cases to reduce the number of people required to be quarantined or relocated, and aggressively do better to blunt the economic and social impacts of lockdowns and narrow their scope.
China can learn from Australia’s experience: a high vaccination rate is not the sole factor upon which to move beyond Zero-Covid. Australia has experimented with phased, partial openings, including travel corridors with partner countries, and endured a burst of infections that quickly subsided. China may take a similarly incremental and increasingly flexible and adaptive approach toward opening up: maintaining travel restrictions on foreign visitors and intra-China travel while reducing the quarantine period for both foreign and domestic travelers.