To the Shanghai residents who arrived The limit of their patience Having kept them locked up at home for two weeks, a senior health official has a message: “Our security cannot be compromised.”
Despite reports that the freeze on daily life in Shanghai has caused food shortages and reduced access to medical care, Liang Wannian, a senior official with China’s National Health Commission, said on Sunday that “people are, first and foremost, the best way to ensure life.” First. “
Under the country’s zero-govt strategy, more than a dozen cities in Shanghai and China remain fully or partially locked up to deal with the sharpening of omigran cases of the corona virus. Locks reveal growing Social And Economic cost Abandoned strategy almost everywhere in the world.
Other countries have lifted most of the restrictions, but “lying flat is not an option for China.” Liang said he refers to the event of “lying flat” or relaxing when faced with a challenge.
China’s relatively low vaccination rates among the elderly and its limited health resources for treating serious viral illnesses continue to worry officials, preventing them from easing epidemic controls. There are 264 million people over the age of 60 in China, about 40 million of whom have not been vaccinated against the corona virus.
Infections are inevitable in this group, but “we have to take it seriously,” he said. Liang said. He said this in an interview with Chinese state media.
Health officials on Monday reported 27,419 new cases spreading domestically in China, most of them in the 26 million city of Shanghai. The number of those cases is small compared to many other countries, but the recent upsurge triggered by the Omicron variant is the largest China has ever experienced.
China has announced more than 200,000 Cases of corona virus that have been spreading domestically in Shanghai since the current outbreak began last month, most of which are mild or asymptomatic. The city currently has only one case classified as “severe”; Officials said the case required hospital treatment, but did not elaborate. No casualties were reported in the current eruption.
Mass testing, an important part of China’s strategy to eliminate infections, has allowed health officials to isolate patients who test positive and send them to a hospital or isolation facility as soon as possible. The southern Chinese city of Guangzhou last week said it was testing all of its 18 million residents, with the lowest number of domestically spread cases – less than 30 – reported in the previous seven days. Authorities in Shanghai announced a second round of mass testing over the city’s 25 million people over the weekend.
In Wuhan, where the corona virus first appeared, authorities began Monday to say that residents who want to use the city’s tunnel must have a negative result in a nucleic acid test within the last 48 hours. According to an announcement posted on Wuhan Metro Online on Monday, passengers will have to show their test results and scan the code from the specific subway car in which they are sitting so authorities can monitor the exposure.
Mr China has said it will not back down from its corona virus strategy. Despite Liang’s point, officials in Shanghai responded to public outcry over the city’s handling of the blast. The deputy mayor said Saturday that the city will begin to remove locking measures in neighborhoods that go 14 days without a new case. On Monday, the city announced a system for classifying districts based on the number of positive cases registered in each.
However, some economists said those moves would not do much to mitigate the large economic impact of the lockout.
Bo Zhuang, a Chinese analyst at investment firm Loomis Sales, said: “The scale of the lockout is far more intense than people have realized.
For most of last year, only a handful of cities in China were locked up at any given time, and economic damage could be dealt with. Zhuang said. But these days, he estimates, equivalent to a quarter of China’s economic output is stagnant.
“Now we’re talking about two states being locked up because of Omigron,” he said. Zhuang said. “It’s a risk going forward.”
Growing frustration is another danger as daily life is disrupted.
When millions of people in Wuhan learned on Monday morning about the new rules imposed overnight regarding the city’s tunnel system, many complained on social media.
“Since the removal of the Wuhan lock two years ago, it has released more drastic prevention and control measures,” wrote Joy Haichaw, a writer and businessman on the popular Chinese social media site Weibo. “It is worrying that we do not see an end to the epidemic.”
“Lifelong social media lover. Falls down a lot. Creator. Devoted food aficionado. Explorer. Typical troublemaker.”