Several Chinese cities have asked residents to stay at home due to a surge in Omicron cases across the country.
On Sunday, millions of people were locked down across China as the country recorded its highest rate of daily coronavirus cases in two years. The city of Shenzhen, home to tech giants such as Huawei and Tencent, has asked its 17 million residents to stay at home after 66 new cases of the coronavirus were reported, the local government said, which closed a business district that had already shut down. secondary places and forbidden restaurants in recent days.
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In Shanghai, China’s most populous metropolis, residential areas were cordoned off one after another, as were schools, businesses, restaurants and shopping malls. Authorities also said on Sunday that people cannot leave or enter the city without a negative test in the last 48 hours.
Zero Covid?
Entire cities in the northeast are subject to the same regime. Yanji, a city of 700,000 on the border with North Korea, is completely isolated. And the major city of Jilin in the northeast has been partially brought under control, with hundreds of neighborhoods, an official announced Sunday. Residents of Jilin, where more than 500 Omicron cases have been reported, completed six rounds of mandatory drug tests on Sunday, according to local authorities.
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China, where the virus was first detected in late 2019, has applied a zero-tolerance policy to the outbreak. It is responding to outbreaks with local restrictions, mass screening, control of its population with tracking apps, and the country’s borders remain virtually closed. But this record of daily cases caused by the Omicron variant undermines that approach.
State media reported that the mayor of Jilin and the health official of Changchun were removed from their posts on Saturday in a political imperative placed on local authorities to deal with the outbreak.