Millions of people are confined, Sunday March 13, across China. The Chinese government has thus announced the confinement of 17 million inhabitants of the city of Shenzhen. The country has recorded its highest rate in two years of daily coronavirus cases, as people’s anxiety over the persistence of the government’s zero Covid-19 policy is growing.
Due to a spike in cases across the country, authorities have closed schools in Shanghai, locked down central neighborhoods in southern tech hub Shenzhen, as well as entire cities in the northeast, as 19 provinces battle outbreaks. local foci due to Delta and Omicron variants.
The large city of Jilin, in the northeast, has been partially confined, with hundreds of neighborhoods put under bell jar, 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 different regions and the lack of (…) medical resources”, causing delays in admitting hospitals and treating patients, he added.