The “zero Covid” under tension: faced with its worst epidemic outbreak in two years, China had to resolve this Friday to confine the large city of Changchun, in the north-east of the country. Nine million inhabitants are placed under bell jars. The town hall, which is preparing to screen the entire population, has specified the terms of the health restrictions: only one person per household is authorized to go out, once every two days. It also ordered the closure of schools and businesses as well as public transport. It is also forbidden to leave the city, which has recorded several hundred cases in recent days.
This confinement is the largest announced by the country since that of the metropolis of Xi’an (North) and its 13 million inhabitants at the end of last year. It is the omicron strain which is at the origin of localized outbreaks, such as in Changchun, which affected 1,369 people this Friday in the last twenty-four hours across China, according to figures from the Ministry of Health. A balance sheet which remains low compared to the rest of the world, but which is nonetheless the highest for the country since the first phase of the epidemic, at the beginning of 2020.
China, where the virus was initially detected at the end of 2019, quickly contained the epidemic, in the spring of 2020, by adopting very strict containment measures affecting entire cities. The Asian giant has thus managed to largely stem the contagion, with an official toll of just over 100,000 cases, including 4,636 deaths exactly, in the space of two years.