China ended its final week of last year with its biggest tally of local COVID-19 cases for any seven-day period since subduing the country’s first epidemic nearly two years ago, despite an arsenal of some of the world’s toughest restrictions.
The Chinese National Health Commission yesterday reported 175 new community infections with confirmed clinical symptoms for Friday, bringing the total number of local symptomatic cases in the nation in the past week to 1,151.
The surge has been driven mostly by an outbreak in the northwestern industrial and tech hub of Xian, a city of 13 million people.
Photo: Reuters
The deepening outbreak in Xian is likely to bolster authorities’ resolve to curb transmissions quickly as and when cases emerge.
The city, under lockdown for 10 days as of yesterday, has reported 1,451 local symptomatic cases since Dec. 9, the highest tally for any Chinese city last year.
While China’s case count is tiny compared with many outbreaks elsewhere in the world, forestalling major flare-ups this year will be important.
Beijing is to host the Winter Olympic Games next month and the Chinese Communist Party is to hold a once-every-five-years congress, expected in the fall, at which Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is likely to secure a third term as party secretary.
The emergence of the highly transmissible Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 will also drive Beijing to stick to its high vigilance against the virus.
China has reported a handful of imported Omicron cases and at least one locally transmitted case.
Since August, China has tried to get any outbreak under control within about two weeks, much shorter than the four to six weeks in earlier battles against sporadic flare-ups following the initial nationwide epidemic, the health commission said.
Cities along China’s borders are at higher virus risk, either due to the presence of overland transport links or entry of infected travelers from other countries.
Some were hit by Delta outbreaks that resulted in harsh travel curbs last year.
Yunnan, which shares a border with Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, reported new local symptomatic cases on 92 out of 365 days last year, or 25 percent of the time, more often than any other province, autonomous region or municipality.
The Xian outbreak, which led to cases in other cities, including Beijing, could be traced back to a flight arriving from Pakistan, but it was unclear how it spread to local communities.
Many people have been forbidden from leaving their residential compounds, but a city government official on Friday said that curbs would be loosened in less risky compounds when the time was right.
Postgraduate student Li Jiaxin, 23, said that nobody can leave the campus of her university.
She spent New Year’s Eve with her three roommates and was unable to meet with her boyfriend and family.
“I might be what you would consider a person with a strong sense of ritual, so I still feel a little sad that we are not together at this time,” Li said.
China’s tough epidemic policies have helped stop its sprawling industrial sector from sliding into prolonged shutdowns, reaping important export gains as other pillars of growth weakened.
However, unpredictable disruptions have shaken consumer sentiment and hammered the catering, hospitality and tourism sectors.
An employee surnamed Wang at a traditional teahouse in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, said that her company’s revenues had been halved compared with pre-pandemic levels.
“Many guests from other provinces had came to our teahouse specially for a taste of Yunnan’s Puer tea, but now there are fewer of them,” Wang said.
“My salary hasn’t been cut, but I feel I may lose my job at any time,” she said.
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