In his policy “Zero Covid” and with the decision to contain any possible outbreak of coronavirus, the government of China confined an industrial city of 9 million people after detecting the appearance of only 47 people infected with Covid-19 in the last hours.
The city in question is Shenyang and the infections were reported in a car plant of the international BMW. The isolation of all its inhabitants will consist of the prohibition to cross borders of the city by land and air, maintain departure times and strictly respect the social distancing and other preventive measures.
The health records of China, the country where scientists identified the origin of the SarsCov that unleashed the pandemic in December 2019, show a very low percentage of infections with respect to its population. Until today, 4,700 new infections were reported out of a total of 1,400 million Chinese.
What are the most affected cities?
China rushes to eradicate infectious foci with targeted lockdowns and mass testing. On Saturday it reported two deaths from coronavirus, the first in more than a year from Covid-19.
Most of those infected with Covid-19 are in Jilinwhile the city of Shenyang, also in the north, was confined last night. The authorities here ordered the residents to stay in their houses and announced that they will not be able to leave without a negative result of a test taken in the previous 48 hours.
The city is the capital of the province of Liaoningbordering northern Jilin, epicenter of the current wave of Covid-19 due to the Omicron variant.
The central government health authorities warned of the economic risk of the constant closuresas the country seeks to balance the health crisis with the needs of the world’s second largest economy.
“Zero Covid”
Chinese President, Xi Jinpinginsisted last week on the need to “minimize the impact” of the pandemic on the economy, but at the same time urged the authorities to “stick” to the current “Zero Covid” policy.
The wave of international infections puts this Chinese policy to the test, forcing the authorities to free up hospital beds with patients presenting with moderate symptoms.
Some cities like Shanghai applied confinements to specific buildingsthus avoiding a closure of the entire city despite the fact that they registered hundreds of daily infections.
Meanwhile, the technological center of Shenzhen announced yesterday the lifting of its week-long confinement, after easing some measures on Friday to minimize the impact of the virus on its economy.