Chinese authorities reported 1,337 locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 across dozens of cities yesterday as a fast-spreading stealth version of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 fuels China’s largest outbreak in two years.
The majority of the new cases — 895 — were in far northeastern Jilin Province, where the COVID-19 task force effectively banned movement throughout the province.
People can only leave the province or travel to another city with permission from the police, the government notice said.
Photo: AP
The surge is infecting people in cities ranging from Shenzhen to Qingdao on the coast, to Xingtai in the north, and the numbers have crept steadily higher since early March.
While the numbers are small relative to those reported in Europe or the US, or even in Hong Kong, which had reported 32,000 cases on Sunday, they are the highest since the first outbreak of COVID-19 in the central city of Wuhan in early 2020.
China has seen very few infections since its strict Wuhan lockdown as the government has held fast to its zero-tolerance strategy, which is focused on stopping transmission of the virus as fast as possible, by relying on strict lockdowns and mandatory quarantines for anyone who has come into contact with a positive case.
The government said that it would continue a strict strategy of stopping transmission.
Officials on Sunday locked down the southern city of Shenzhen, which has 17.5 million people and is a major tech and finance hub that neighbors Hong Kong.
Zhang Wenhong (張文宏), a prominent infectious disease expert at a hospital affiliated with Shanghai’s Fudan University, yesterday said in China’s business outlet Caixin that the numbers in China were still in the beginning stages of an “exponential rise.”
Shanghai confirmed 41 new cases yesterday.
The city has recorded 713 cases in March, of which 632 are asymptomatic. China counts positive and asymptomatic cases separately in its national numbers.
Signs of normal life in Shanghai are abating, as schools have switched to remote learning and office buildings closed. Shanghai has primarily relied on locking down single buildings instead of the whole city.
Li Yimeng, a 28-year-old Shanghai resident, said she is on high alert because of the possibility of suddenly being quarantined. Some of her colleagues have been absent because they have been required to quarantine at home.
“Every day when I go to work, I worry that if our office building will suddenly be locked down, then I won’t be able to get home, so I have bought a sleeping bag and stored some fast food in the office in advance, just in case,” Li said.
In Beijing, which reported six cases yesterday, multiple residential and commercial buildings were sealed off over the weekend.
Many Beijing residents said they were willing to follow the zero-tolerance policies despite any personal impact.
“I think only when the epidemic is totally wiped out can we ease up,” said Tong Xin, 38, a shop owner in the Silk Market in Beijing.
Much of the current outbreak is being driven by the BA2 lineage of the Omicron variant, also called “stealth Omicron,” Zhang said.
Early research suggests that it spreads faster than the original Omicron, which itself spread faster than previous variants.
“If our country opens up quickly now, it will cause a large number of infections in people in a short period of time,” Zhang wrote yesterday. “No matter how low the death rate is, it will still cause a run on medical resources and a short-term shock to social life, causing irreparable harm to families and society.”
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