The authorities were eager to stem out epidemic homes by confining the affected areas. But in the face of a form of weariness, the country reflects to relax its restrictions policy.
Le Monde with AFP
It’s a setback for China. The country’s health authorities identified nearly 3,400 cases of coronavirus, Sunday, March 13, a summit since the beginning of the epidemic in February 2020.
Due to this peak of cases across the country, the authorities closed the Shanghai schools and confined several cities in the northeastern, while almost nineteen provinces hasten to stem from local homes due to Delta and Omicron variants. The big city of Jilin, in the northeast, was partially confined, with hundreds of neighborhoods put under bell, announced a manager. Yanji, a city of 700,000 inhabitants at the North Korean border, has been fully confined.
China, where the virus was detected for the first time end of 2019, applied a zero tolerance policy against the epidemic. It reacts to epidemic homes by local confines, mass detection, and control of its population through tracing applications. The country’s borders remain virtually closed.
Mayors Remember their functions
But this unpublished number of daily cases, caused by the Omicron Variant, hurts this approach. “The emergency response mechanism in certain areas is not robust enough, understanding the characteristics of the Omicron variant is insufficient (…) and the judgment has been inaccurate,” admitted at a government press. Zhang Yan, Health Manager of Jilin Province.
“This also reflects the rapid rise (…) of the virus in the different regions and the lack of (…) medical resources”, causing admission delays in hospitals and patient treatment, has it Added.
The inhabitants of Jilin, who reported more than 500 cases of Omicron variant, had completed their six sets of mandatory screening tests on Sunday, according to local authorities. Saturday, several hundred neighborhoods of the city have been confined. Changchun, neighboring city and industrial base of 9 million inhabitants, has been put under bell Friday.
The Mayor of Jilin and the Changchun health manager have been removed from their duties on Saturday, reported the state media, a sign of the political imperative imposed on the local authorities to fight against epidemic homes.
Restrictions that tire
China has so far been successful in keeping the cases of coronavirus at a very low level thanks to localized confines and mass screenings and its closed borders. But lassitude in the face of this strict approach is becoming more and more heard in the country. Many officials now advocate more targeted measures, and economists warn that radical restrictions are detrimental to the country’s economy.
The health policy has generally been sweeter since the rise of cases, which began in February, in December, when the city of Xi’an and its 13 million inhabitants had been fully confined for two weeks.
In the largest city in China, Shanghai, the authorities preferred to focus on social distancing by temporarily closing schools, companies, restaurants and shopping centers rather than quarantine mass. Long queues have also been observed in front of city hospitals, people rushing to get a negative Covid test.
In the face of increasing cases, the National Health Authority announced on Friday that it would introduce the use of rapid antigenic tests, which could indicate a form of relaxation of the Communist Party’s sanitary policy.
Last week, a high-level Chinese scientist said the country should seek to live with the virus, as other countries have done. But the government has not dismissed the possibility of resorting to strict confines. The smaller cities of Siping and Dunhua, both located in the province of Jilin, were confined Thursday and Friday, according to the official ads.