Millions of people are confined, Sunday March 13, across China. The country has recorded its highest rate in two years of daily coronavirus cases, while people’s anxiety over the persistence of the government’s zero-covid policy is growing.
Due to a spike in cases across the country, authorities closed schools in Shanghai, locked down central districts in southern tech hub Shenzhen, as well as entire cities in the northeast, while nearly nineteen provinces fight against local foci due to the Delta and Omicron variants.
The large city of Jilin, in the northeast, has been partially confined, with hundreds of neighborhoods placed under bell jars, an official announced on Sunday. Yanji, a town of 700,000 people on the North Korean border, has been completely confined.
China, where the virus was first detected in late 2019, has applied a zero-tolerance policy to the outbreak. It reacts to epidemic outbreaks with local confinements, mass screening, and control of its population through tracing applications. The country’s borders remain virtually closed.
But this record of daily cases, caused by the Omicron variant, undermines this approach. “The emergency response mechanism in some areas is not robust enough, the understanding of the characteristics of the Omicron variant is insufficient (…) and the judgment was inaccurate”admitted at a government press briefing Zhang Yan, health official of Jilin province. “It also reflects the rapid rise (…) of the virus in the various regions and the lack of (…) medical resources”, causing delays in hospital admissions and treatment of patients, he added.