Immediate sanction. The Central Disciplinary Inspection Commission announced on Friday that 26 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials had been sanctioned for “Lack of rigor in the prevention and control of the epidemic”. According to this commission, the investigation carried out revealed a certain laxity in screening in Xi’an and poor coordination which hampered the search for contact cases.
The Chinese authorities have been applying a “zero Covid” strategy since last year: doing everything to limit the occurrence of new cases as much as possible. They thus place heavy pressure on local officials. Chinese officials who have failed to contain the epidemic in their province or city are thus regularly reprimanded, even sacked. A CCP official in Inner Mongolia (north) was fired after an outbreak of Covid in his region in October, as was the head of health services in the big city of Zhengzhou (central) in August.
Confinement
The city of Xi’an, famous for housing the 8,000 statues of the Terracotta Army, is facing an epidemic outbreak. This megalopolis in the north of the country reported 49 new Covid-19 patients on Friday, bringing the total to more than 250 in recent weeks.
The Chinese authorities decided on Thursday to confine its 13 million inhabitants. Each household can only send one of its members outside, once every two days, to buy basic necessities. Those wishing to leave the city must apply for a special permit. The businesses were closed and the health authorities launched screening of the entire population.
China has successfully brought the epidemic under control on its soil and is said to have recorded just two deaths in a year and a half. However, it remains mobilized to avoid any major outbreak before the Beijing Winter Olympics. Life has been almost normal in the country since the spring of 2020, thanks to drastic measures: long mandatory quarantines on arrival, targeted confinements, massive screenings, mobile applications for tracking movements and drastic limitation of international flights. But sporadic outbreaks occur regularly in recent months.