Patient beds at a makeshift hospital in Shanghai, China, April 21, 2022. YANG YOUZONG/AP
The death toll from Covid-19 in Shanghai rose sharply on Sunday April 24 despite strict restrictive measures. China’s most populous city has announced the deaths of 39 people in 24 hours, bringing the total deaths since the lockdown began to at least 87.
China, which has experienced its biggest epidemic outbreak in two years in recent weeks, has locked in nearly all of the 25 million residents of its economic capital, Shanghai, the epicenter of the contagion, since early April. Among the 39 deceased are elderly people suffering from pathologies such as high blood pressure, the authorities said.
Read the story: Article reserved for our subscribers In Shanghai, anger and rebellion against the violence of captivity
Nearly 22,000 new positive cases were also registered in Shanghai on Sunday, bringing the total cases to nearly half a million since early March.
“The situation is serious”
Since the start of the epidemic, first detected in central China in late 2019, the country has managed to limit the total number of victims to fewer than 5,000 deaths and fewer than 200,000 infections if we go by the official figures, much lower than internationally counts. But the Omicron variant hit hard the residents of Shanghai, who were being held indefinitely in sometimes spartan conditions. The low mortality rate is worrying, especially as vaccination rates among elders are low.
Also read: Article reserved for our Covid-19 subscribers: In Shanghai, censorship increases residents’ anger
For its part, the capital Beijing, more than a thousand kilometers away, reported 22 new cases and warned that “urgent” measures were needed to stop the contagion. “The situation is serious, the whole city must act immediately,” Beijing health official Pang Xinghuo told reporters on Saturday, noting that the virus has likely spread “invisibly” in recent years.