COVID Outbreak in China | Closure of provinces
In China, a COVID outbreak has resulted in the closure of a province with a population of 24 million people.
WRITTEN BY: SONALI SINGH
Jilin province’s shutdown comes a day after China placed 17.5 million people of Shenzhen, a technological and commercial hub in the south, on lockdown for at least a week due to an increase in cases.
Following a sharp rise in Covid-19 cases, China cut off the northeastern province of Jilin, which has a population of over 24 million people, marking the first time an entire province has been cut off since the unprecedented lockdown of Hubei and its capital, Wuhan, in 2020, where the virus was first detected in late 2019.
Jilin province’s shutdown comes a day after China placed 17.5 million people of Shenzhen, a technological and commercial hub in the south, on lockdown for at least a week due to an increase in cases.
New infections have been recorded from Shanghai in the east to Shenzhen in the south, with clusters in Beijing and populous provinces like Zhejiang. China’s authorities are rushing to manage a country-wide rise in cases with mass screenings, lockdowns, and travel restrictions.
On March 13, the national health commission (NHC) announced 1,337 new domestically transmitted Covid cases in mainland China. On Monday, 2125 instances were reported Sunday, including asymptomatic cases. According to Reuters calculations, this pushed the number this year to almost 9,000, up from 8378 in 2021.
People in Jilin province, which borders Russia and North Korea, have been instructed not to leave or travel, especially in Changchun, the provincial capital, and Jilin itself.
On Sunday, the provincial government of Jilin recorded 895 locally transmitted Covid-19 cases and 131 asymptomatic carriers. 453 fresh confirmed infections were recorded in the city of Jilin, and 430 in the provincial capital Changchun, a city with a population of over nine million people that is already under lockdown.
To contain the latest outbreak, local officials have undertaken numerous rounds of mass nucleic acid testing and constructed makeshift hospitals, according to state news agency Xinhua.
China has implemented a stringent “zero-Covid” policy, which has recently been renamed “dynamic zero,” intending to eradicate epidemics and chains of transmission through mass testing, contact tracing, quarantine, and lockdowns.
The fast-spreading Omicron form, on the other hand, has cast doubt on China’s anti-Covid laws. For example, the city of Shanghai is witnessing a severe outbreak, the worst since 2020.
“As the city grapples with its most serious Covid-19 outbreak since the pandemic began two years ago, Shanghai has suspended long-distance bus services, shut down entertainment venues, and placed hundreds of residential compounds, university campuses, and office buildings on lockdown,” the Sixth Tone website reported on Monday.
Since the first case in the current wave was discovered on March 1, it has documented over 700 infections, with 89 percent of them asymptomatic.
By Sunday, the total number of verified Covid-19 cases on the mainland, both locally and internationally, had climbed to 116,902. On Sunday, 8,531 patients were still receiving treatment, with eight of them in critical condition. Since the disease’s emergence in late 2019, 4636 people have died from the virus on the mainland.
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