Since the deadly infection initially emerged in Wuhan in 2019, more provinces in China are fighting Covid-19 than at any other time.
Despite increasingly rigorous precautions taken by officials to resist the highly infectious delta strain, it is spreading across the country.
In the newest outbreak in the world’s second-largest economy, more than 600 locally-transmitted cases have been discovered in 19 of 31 provinces.
On Wednesday, China reported 93 new local cases and 11 asymptomatic illnesses.
Cases were found in three more provinces on the eastern coast: central Chongqing, Henan, and Jiangsu.
Covid zero approach
Even though flare-ups are arriving faster, spreading further, and escaping many of the safeguards that previously controlled the virus, Chinese officials say they are dedicated to maintaining a so-called Covid Zero policy.
Because of the extreme measures required to eradicate the delta form, some other nations that had been pursuing coronavirus eradication, such as Singapore and Australia, have shifted their approach and are now relying on high vaccination rates to be able to live with the virus as endemic.
Guests Locked in Disneyland Show (current situation) Extreme Covid Tactics in China On Wednesday, Beijing reported nine infections, one of which was previously described as asymptomatic
The overall number of cases in Beijing in the current wave has risen to 38, a low number compared to other parts of the world but the largest since a pre-delta outbreak in January and February last year.
Ticket sales into the city for trains from 123 stations in 23 areas have been blocked, according to authorities at a government briefing.
After a teacher was determined to be ill, officials confined pupils in two Beijing schools.
Another 16 were closed due to the possibility that their employees were present at the vaccination site where the infected instructor had recently received a booster dose..
Latest Outbreak
Chongqing, a newcomer to the recent outbreak, began widespread testing overnight in the hopes of acting quickly within the “golden 24 hours” after the virus is discovered. Changzhou, a city in Jiangsu province, has shut down schools for at least three days, with students taking online classes in the meanwhile.
China may be able to go considerably further in its efforts to keep Covid-19 out.
On Sunday, more than 30,000 people were tested at Shanghai Disneyland, with tourists being kept inside until nearly midnight after one infected person was discovered.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people in the rural southeastern city of Ruili, near the high-risk Myanmar border, have been displaced.
China’s Isolation is Cracking Under the Pressure of Keeping Covid Out
According to an interview with state broadcaster CGTN, China’s top health expert, Zhong Nanshan, believes the country can contain the current outbreak in a month.
Despite the global trend of countries learning to coexist with the virus, Zhong defended China’s strategy, which has been criticised for its economic consequences. Zhong assisted the government in quelling many breakouts since the epidemic began.
While the limits required to manage the virus are costly, he believes that opening up the country and allowing the illness to spread would be even more costly.
