Over 1,400 Covid-19 cases recorded, three elderly people dead over weekend

After a significant reduction in restrictions due to the health crisis in China, on November 11, schools again returned to online lessons. Restaurants, gyms, parks and tourist sites have been closed, and employees are being asked to work from home. The Chinese capital, which has 22 million inhabitants, had recorded 621 new cases of Covid-19 on Sunday. She counted 1,438 on Tuesday, November 22, a number never recorded since the start of the pandemic. Three elderly Pekingese suffering from pathologies died after contamination over the weekend. These are the first recorded deaths linked to the virus since May.

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The capital’s authorities seem to want to avoid strict confinement for the moment, like the one that was applied in Shanghai in the spring, but have however reinforced health measures in the last few days. Nearly 600 areas of the capital, including residential buildings, are considered to be “high risk”, which forces their inhabitants to remain confined to their homes or to be transported to quarantine centers. In the streets, queues are getting longer in front of Covid-19 test booths, with most public places now requiring a negative result within twenty-four hours to gain access.

Residents line up to carry out Covid-19 tests on a street in Beijing, Sunday, November 20, 2022, as strict new measures are imposed in Beijing.

Nationwide, the total number of daily cases, including imported cases, now exceeds 28,000, with southern Guangdong province and southwest Chongqing city the most affected, according to health authorities. .

Zero Covid Policy

China is the last major world economy to apply a strict health policy, which aims to do everything to prevent contamination and death. Its zero Covid policy consists of imposing confinements as soon as cases appear, quarantines for people who test positive, and almost daily PCR tests for the population.

But this strategy, initially effective in stemming the spread of the virus, seems to be running out of steam in the face of new variants and is dealing a severe blow to the economy, isolating China from the rest of the world and causing strong weariness among the Chinese.

Several Chinese cities had also stopped large-scale testing last week, but some of them have since reinstated them, reflecting the difficulty of controlling the more contagious Omicron variant.

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The World with AFP

source site-29