Buildings quarantined in Shanghai, China on October 7, 2022, after new cases of Covid-19 were detected (AFP/Archives/Hector RETAMAL)
China announced on Saturday that it would stick “unwaveringly” to its zero Covid policy, dampening the markets’ hopes of an easing by Beijing, the last major economy to apply a radical health protocol, which does not prevent it from face an increase in cases as winter approaches.
Beijing “will unswervingly stick to the comprehensive zero Covid policy,” National Health Commission (NHC) spokesman Mi Feng said.
The zero Covid policy in China, in force for almost three years, results in repeated confinements, large-scale PCR tests and compulsory quarantine on arrival from abroad, which will therefore continue.
“At present, China is still facing the double threat of imported infections and the spread of domestic epidemics,” Mi Feng argued at a press conference, deeming the situation in the face of the pandemic “more gloomy. and complex than ever”.
“We must continue to put people and lives first,” said the spokesperson, as China recorded an increase in cases on Saturday, with 3,659 new infections, most of them asymptomatic, against 2,000 new positive cases on Wednesday.
The number of people in quarantine in the country is now at its highest since the containment of Shanghai in the spring, notes the firm Capital Economics, with outbreaks detected in more than 50 cities.
In the south, the semi-autonomous territory of Macau announced Tuesday a general screening of its 680,000 inhabitants after the discovery of a handful of cases.
In Canton (south), partial confinements had been decreed on Monday in several districts.
At the other end of the country, outbreaks have been detected in towns in the northeast, near the border with Russia and North Korea.
Chinese authorities confined the 600,000 people living around the factory that manufactures the majority of iPhones in the world for a week on Wednesday, after the flight of employees worried by the discovery of an outbreak of Covid-19. The economic zone around Zhengzhou airport (center), where the plant is located, employs more than 200,000 people.
© 2022 AFP
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