BEIJING: China is gradually lifting restrictions in Beijing and continuing a punitive lockdown in Shanghai as it tries to control the spread covid In the world’s most populous country, the top US infectious disease physician criticized an approach as ineffective.
Shanghai recorded 4,651 infections on Thursday, which includes 34 communities, defying a lockdown that has confined residents to their homes for more than a month. Officials said the city would not relax restrictions until cases in the community hit zero for three consecutive days.
Beijing reported 50 cases on its 12th double-digit day, while the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou announced a snap lockdown designed to cripple transmission of the pathogen. Officials in the provincial capital of Henan province, which hosts a giant iPhone factory, expect the introduction of widespread restrictions to bring its flare-up under control in about a week’s time.
iPhone maker Foxconn Technology Group said its operations are currently unaffected as factory workers are working in a “closed loop” where they sleep and live on site.
Despite the impact on the economy and quality of life, officials are living up to their commitment to zero tolerance. lockdown It is unlikely to be successful in the long run because the government is not using the time to boost vaccination rates among the highest-risk elderly, and the shots they are giving are less effective, White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci Told a German talk show.
The lockdown should be used to prepare the population to prevent the spread of infection in the future, Fauci said on the Mashburger show. He said that doing lockdown and doing nothing is a strategy which does not work at all.
Some cities in China, including Shenzhen and Jilin, have successfully brought the outbreak under control. Lockdowns and movement restrictions limited interactions in those areas, preventing the virus from leaping from person to person. The country’s two largest cities are adopting the same battle plan in hopes of ending their outbreak.
construction of beijing
Ahead of the Labor Day holiday, Beijing has been continuously imposing restrictions since Friday. Authorities banned eating in restaurants, requiring negative test results to enter nearly all public places and encouraged residents of the eastern Chaoyang district, where the outbreak is concentrated, to work from home.
As the holiday ended earlier this week, the government suspended schools for another week and closed a large number of metro stations in eastern Chaoyang and other areas where infections have been detected. Most of the city’s 22 million residents are required to take a daily COVID test.
Nationwide, there were 5,038 cases on Thursday. The last time China reported no new infections nationally was in October. The highly contagious nature of the Omicron version means the cycle of outbreaks is likely to continue, offering no respite to residents such as those in Shanghai who have already endured a five-week lockdown.
“It is possible for Shanghai to come back to zero from this current outbreak,” said Benjamin Cowling, professor and chair of epidemiology at the University of Hong Kong. “It is also possible that there will be a new outbreak of omicron in Shanghai in the coming months, causing further disruption in the city when the lockdown is reimposed.”
easy outbreak
There are signs Shanghai’s outbreak is easing, cases are declining and more than 70% of industrial manufacturing facilities are resuming production. Of the 660 major industrial companies, 90% have resumed production, Zhang Hongtao, an official in the municipal government’s economic affairs department, said at a briefing.
Authorities in Jiangsu province said an 18-month-old child who died of suffocation on April 30 was not denied care because he did not have a negative Covid test, as alleged by his parents, although he was given a It took five hours to transfer to the hospital. Well equipped facility in Xuzhou. An investigation found that no hospital required the test before the boy was treated.
The county hospital in Suying, where the family had previously sought help, failed to properly inform them of the potential consequences of the child’s condition and timely communicate patient information to the city hospital, according to a statement from the Xuzhou city government. did not relay. The director of the hospital was removed from his post and after investigation the medical license of the consulting doctor was suspended.
reduce defense
The question is how long China plans to maintain the approach, especially as most places globally have acknowledged that the virus is now ubiquitous. Whenever China lowers its defenses, it will face the pathogen.
Despite the fact that more than 80% of the country’s 1.4 billion people have been fully vaccinated and half have received booster shots, the virus continues to spread. The country has relied on fanatical sanctions to keep the virus at bay during the pandemic.
inactivated vaccines
Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Lei Zhong and Sam Fazeli wrote in a note to clients that China used exclusively indigenous shots, mostly inactivated vaccines from Sinovac Biotech Ltd and Sinopharm that were prepared from the original virus in Wuhan. The shots are less effective than the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer Inc., BioNTech SE and Moderna Inc., and many people haven’t received the three doses needed for complete protection, he said.
“The widespread use of mRNA-based vaccines is the only effective way China can achieve high immunity to COVID-19 and avoid repeated, painful lockdowns,” he said.
Fauci said the heavy Covid toll in places like the US and Europe means they are unlikely to face the situation China is currently facing again. He said a year ago some people were vaccinated, but now most people have been vaccinated or have recovered from an earlier infection.
A stricter lockdown in the US or Europe would be too surprising, according to Fauci, who said he does not anticipate an “explosive pandemic” outbreak in those regions again.
Shanghai recorded 4,651 infections on Thursday, which includes 34 communities, defying a lockdown that has confined residents to their homes for more than a month. Officials said the city would not relax restrictions until cases in the community hit zero for three consecutive days.
Beijing reported 50 cases on its 12th double-digit day, while the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou announced a snap lockdown designed to cripple transmission of the pathogen. Officials in the provincial capital of Henan province, which hosts a giant iPhone factory, expect the introduction of widespread restrictions to bring its flare-up under control in about a week’s time.
iPhone maker Foxconn Technology Group said its operations are currently unaffected as factory workers are working in a “closed loop” where they sleep and live on site.
Despite the impact on the economy and quality of life, officials are living up to their commitment to zero tolerance. lockdown It is unlikely to be successful in the long run because the government is not using the time to boost vaccination rates among the highest-risk elderly, and the shots they are giving are less effective, White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci Told a German talk show.
The lockdown should be used to prepare the population to prevent the spread of infection in the future, Fauci said on the Mashburger show. He said that doing lockdown and doing nothing is a strategy which does not work at all.
Some cities in China, including Shenzhen and Jilin, have successfully brought the outbreak under control. Lockdowns and movement restrictions limited interactions in those areas, preventing the virus from leaping from person to person. The country’s two largest cities are adopting the same battle plan in hopes of ending their outbreak.
construction of beijing
Ahead of the Labor Day holiday, Beijing has been continuously imposing restrictions since Friday. Authorities banned eating in restaurants, requiring negative test results to enter nearly all public places and encouraged residents of the eastern Chaoyang district, where the outbreak is concentrated, to work from home.
As the holiday ended earlier this week, the government suspended schools for another week and closed a large number of metro stations in eastern Chaoyang and other areas where infections have been detected. Most of the city’s 22 million residents are required to take a daily COVID test.
Nationwide, there were 5,038 cases on Thursday. The last time China reported no new infections nationally was in October. The highly contagious nature of the Omicron version means the cycle of outbreaks is likely to continue, offering no respite to residents such as those in Shanghai who have already endured a five-week lockdown.
“It is possible for Shanghai to come back to zero from this current outbreak,” said Benjamin Cowling, professor and chair of epidemiology at the University of Hong Kong. “It is also possible that there will be a new outbreak of omicron in Shanghai in the coming months, causing further disruption in the city when the lockdown is reimposed.”
easy outbreak
There are signs Shanghai’s outbreak is easing, cases are declining and more than 70% of industrial manufacturing facilities are resuming production. Of the 660 major industrial companies, 90% have resumed production, Zhang Hongtao, an official in the municipal government’s economic affairs department, said at a briefing.
Authorities in Jiangsu province said an 18-month-old child who died of suffocation on April 30 was not denied care because he did not have a negative Covid test, as alleged by his parents, although he was given a It took five hours to transfer to the hospital. Well equipped facility in Xuzhou. An investigation found that no hospital required the test before the boy was treated.
The county hospital in Suying, where the family had previously sought help, failed to properly inform them of the potential consequences of the child’s condition and timely communicate patient information to the city hospital, according to a statement from the Xuzhou city government. did not relay. The director of the hospital was removed from his post and after investigation the medical license of the consulting doctor was suspended.
reduce defense
The question is how long China plans to maintain the approach, especially as most places globally have acknowledged that the virus is now ubiquitous. Whenever China lowers its defenses, it will face the pathogen.
Despite the fact that more than 80% of the country’s 1.4 billion people have been fully vaccinated and half have received booster shots, the virus continues to spread. The country has relied on fanatical sanctions to keep the virus at bay during the pandemic.
inactivated vaccines
Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Lei Zhong and Sam Fazeli wrote in a note to clients that China used exclusively indigenous shots, mostly inactivated vaccines from Sinovac Biotech Ltd and Sinopharm that were prepared from the original virus in Wuhan. The shots are less effective than the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer Inc., BioNTech SE and Moderna Inc., and many people haven’t received the three doses needed for complete protection, he said.
“The widespread use of mRNA-based vaccines is the only effective way China can achieve high immunity to COVID-19 and avoid repeated, painful lockdowns,” he said.
Fauci said the heavy Covid toll in places like the US and Europe means they are unlikely to face the situation China is currently facing again. He said a year ago some people were vaccinated, but now most people have been vaccinated or have recovered from an earlier infection.
A stricter lockdown in the US or Europe would be too surprising, according to Fauci, who said he does not anticipate an “explosive pandemic” outbreak in those regions again.