China, which has been advocating a “zero Covid” strategy for nearly two years now, has never recorded so many cases since the peak of the first wave. According to health authorities, 13,146 cases of Covid-19 were identified this Sunday. These are “1,455 patients with symptoms” and “11,691 asymptomatic”, and “no new deaths have been reported”, detailed the National Health Commission in a press release, while the highly contagious Omicron variant , has spread to more than a dozen provinces.
Almost all of the 25 million inhabitants of Shanghai, the economic capital of China, have been confined since Saturday. The city has become in recent days the epicenter of a new wave of contamination linked to Omicron. Several tens of millions of Chinese are also confined to the northeast of the country, the cradle of the automotive industry.
China, where the coronavirus was first detected in late 2019, is one of the last countries in the world to practice a “zero Covid” policy aimed at preventing new cases from emerging through draconian lockdowns, mass testing, systematic isolation of infected people and virtual closure of borders.