Since mid-November, even before the abandonment of zero covid policy, the number of infected people has exploded. While the health restrictions have been lifted by the central power, the inhabitants are forced to confine themselves.
by Simon Leplâtre (Shanghaï, Correspondance) and Frédéric Lemaître (Beijing, correspondent)
After three years of patient construction, the sanitary dike set up by the Chinese government against the COVID-19 ended up yielding. And the omicron variant is likely to take everything in its path. In Beijing, until mid-November, the virus remained a marginal phenomenon. Since then, cases have multiplied, at a dizzying speed.
The systematic screening policy having been abandoned on December 7, no more public data is credible. But a survey published on December 15 by the journal The Beijinger with 3,000 expatriates in the capital indicates that 9 % of them had the COVVI-19 before 1 er December, 58 % since This date and that only 33 % did not catch it. On positive people, 30 % had only light symptoms, 52 % moderate and 14 % severe or very severe. These figures seem credible.
Many clues suggest that negative people are now a minority among the 22 million Beijing. At the door of certain residences, the guards’ workforce melted by 75 % in a few days. A district of Beijing, Fengtai, asks healthy and vaccinated residents to volunteer to overcome missing couriers, which have become essential in this ghost town where everyone remains cloistered at home and shops online.
“A barely believable change”
Cathy Niu was infected on December 11. “We are 2,000 employees in my company, and 90 % have already been infected. In my team of fifteen, only two went to the office today, the others work remotely, explains this Beijing woman who works in a marketing company . We need a PCR test to enter our building, but even those who are negative prefer to avoid the office these days. “
In one week, everything has been turned upside down: “As people have been tested positive for the workplace, only these continue to come. Negative people remain at home. It is a barely believable change” , testifies a Chinese employee of a public company. In Beijing, where schools only work in distancing, “40 % of students have a mark on the front indicating that they have a fever,” said a mother. And not all of them participate in courses.
If hospitals seem to be sticking, the number of people placed in intensive care increased by 37 % between December 12 and 15. Friday, the staff of certain pekin crematoriums claimed to work twenty-four hours a day to face the demand. According to the radio site Free Asia, an employee of the Dongfeng hospital believes that due to the number of positive employees and the increase in the number of deaths, families must wait five to seven days for the cremation of the deceased. However, according to the official count, the last death due to the COVVI-19 in the country dates back to December 3.
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