Most of the 21 million people in the southwestern city of Chengdu are not allowed to leave their homes, while classes in the eastern port city of Tianjin have been moved online after 14 new diagnoses were made, most of them without symptoms.
China has registered a total of 1,552 new cases in the past 24 hours, the National Health Commission said. The Asian country is the most populous in the world, with 1.4 billion inhabitants.
The highly contagious micron variant is forcing the Chinese authorities to impose extreme containment measures to ensure the “zero cases” strategy, which was adopted as a political triumph by the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping.
The strategy requires the isolation of all positive cases, including asymptomatic ones, and their direct contacts, conducting mass testing and blocking entire districts and cities.
These measures have huge economic and social costs, but the Chinese Communist Party says they are needed to stop the wider spread of the virus, which was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.
The fear of being caught in a lockdown or sent to a quarantine center for being in close contact with a positive case severely limits social and professional life.
In Chengdu, the start of the new school year has been postponed and most residents are locked. A total of 33 cities are on lockdown, according to state media.
Several cities have asked residents not to travel during the upcoming public holidays in China.
Beijing has announced that authorities will be “tighter” in managing and monitoring the pandemic during the mid-autumn break, on Sept. 12 and the National Day in early October, according to the official Global Times newspaper.
Since the outbreak began, China has relentlessly imprisoned tens of millions of people, sometimes limiting access to food, health care and basic necessities.
The nearly two-month blockade of Shanghai, China’s financial “capital” and main industrial center, has shaken the country’s economy and caused an exodus of foreign residents.
Source: DN
