The number of daily cases of Covid-19 reached a new record in China on Thursday, the authorities reported, at a time when they once again imposed strict preventive measures, within the framework of the ‘Covid zero’ strategy.
China registered 31,444 new cases in the past 24 hours, of which 27,517 are asymptomatic, according to the Ministry of Health.
These figures exceed the 29,317 infections registered in mid-April, when Shanghai – the third most populous city in the world – imposed a confinement, which was marked by scenes of violence and food shortages.
This week, authorities also reported China’s first Covid-19 deaths in six months, bringing the total to 5,232.
China, the world’s most populous country with around 1.4 billion people, is the only major economy still trying to contain the spread of the virus.
The ‘zero cases’ strategy includes the confinement of entire cities, the obligation to present a negative test for the new coronavirus to access public spaces and the isolation of all positive cases and their direct contacts in designated facilities, often in conditions degrading. China has also kept its borders virtually closed since March 2020.
Beijing is facing the worst outbreak since the start of the pandemic. Dozens of residential buildings were shuttered, schools shuttered, and businesses asked employees to work from home.
The Chinese capital announced some 1,500 new positive cases (the vast majority asymptomatic), among its 22 million inhabitants. The city opened, this week, a makeshift hospital, in an exhibition center, and suspended access to the Beijing University of International Studies, after having detected a case on the ‘campus’.
In Zhengzhou city, Henan province, a total of 6.6 million residents were told to stay at home for the next five days, only allowed out to buy food or receive medical treatment. Daily mass tests have been ordered, as part of what the city government has dubbed the “war of annihilation” of the virus.
Businesses and residential communities in Guangzhou, a major industrial hub in Guangdong province, have also been subjected to various forms of lockdown, measures that particularly affect migrant workers. In many cases, residents say the restrictions go beyond what national guidelines allow.
Guangzhou on Monday suspended access to Baiyun district, home to 3.7 million people, as residents of some areas of Shijiazhuang, a city of 11 million southwest of Beijing, were told to stay in their houses while mass testing was underway.
Source: TSF
