Millions of people across China endured lockdowns yesterday as virus cases doubled to nearly 3,400 and anxiety mounted over the resilience of the country’s “zero COVID” approach in the face of the worst outbreak in two years.
A nationwide surge in cases has seen authorities close schools in Shanghai and lock down central neighborhoods in the southern tech powerhouse of Shenzhen as well as whole northeastern cities, as almost 18 provinces battle clusters of the Omicron and Delta variants of SARS-CoV-2.
The city of Jilin, center of the outbreak in the northeast, was partly locked down on Saturday, while residents of Yanji, an urban area of nearly 700,000 bordering North Korea, were confined to their homes yesterday.
Photo: AP
China has maintained a strict “zero COVID” policy enforced by swift lockdowns, travel restrictions and mass testing when clusters have emerged. However, the latest flare-up, driven by the Omicron variant and a spike in asymptomatic cases, is testing the efficacy of that approach.
Zhang Yan, an official at the Jilin provincial health commission, conceded that local authorities’ virus response so far had been lacking.
“The emergency response mechanism in some areas is not robust enough,” he said at a press briefing yesterday. “There is insufficient understanding of the characteristics of the Omicron variant ... and judgement has been inaccurate.”
Residents of Jilin have completed six rounds of mass testing, with the city reporting more than 2,200 cases of the Omicron variant since Saturday. The neighboring city of Changchun — an industrial base of 9 million people — was locked down on Friday, while at least three other small cities have been locked down since March 1.
The mayor of Jilin and the head of the Changchun health commission were dismissed from their jobs on Saturday, state media reported, in a sign of the political imperative placed on local authorities to contain virus clusters.
In Shenzhen, the southern city of around 13 million bordering Hong Kong, residents have been caught between nerves at a renewed outbreak and angst at the swift, draconian measures to squash clusters.
“It’s the worst since 2020,” a Shenzhen resident surnamed Zhang told reporters. “The closures are too sudden, my friend woke up in the morning to find her building was sealed overnight without warning. Her boss had to mail her laptop to her.”
The Shenzhen subdistrict of Futian, which was locked down yesterday, is home to 300,000 people and a thriving commercial district. It shares a land border crossing with Hong Kong, where the caseload over recent weeks has soared, alarming officials in Beijing.
In China’s biggest city, Shanghai, authorities have increasingly moved to temporarily lock down individual schools, businesses, restaurants and malls over close-contact fears rather than using mass quarantines. Long lines have been seen outside hospitals in the city as people rush to obtain a negative COVID-19 test.
As cases rise, the country’s National Health Commission announced on Friday that it would introduce the use of rapid antigen tests.
The kits will now be available online or at pharmacies for clinics and ordinary citizens to buy for “self-testing,” the health commission said.
Although nucleic acid tests will continue to be the main method of testing, the move suggests China might be anticipating that official efforts will not be able to contain the virus.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant