By John Ikani
China reported thousands of new local Covid-19 cases Sunday as the Omicron variant drove the worst outbreak in the country since Wuhan in early 2020, according to the National Health Commission (NHC).
A total of 3,507 domestically transmitted cases with confirmed symptoms were reported on Monday across more than a dozen provinces and municipalities, the NHC said, up from 1,337 a day earlier.
Two major Chinese cities — northeastern industrial hub Changchun and southern economic hub Shenzhen — are under lockdown, with more than 26 million residents forbidden from leaving their homes.
Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong, recorded 66 positive cases Saturday and health authorities announced in a news release Sunday evening that from March 14 to March 20, all businesses in the city — apart from those deemed essential or supplying Hong Kong — would suspend operations or introduce work from home measures.
Public transport has also been suspended, as well as indoor dining, while all public venues excluding grocery stores and pharmacies have been closed, the authorities said.
In the financial hub of Shanghai, authorities battling an outbreak across the city were cordoning off individual apartment buildings and testing all residents.
China’s aviation regulator said that 106 international flights scheduled to arrive in Shanghai would be diverted to other domestic cities from 21 March to 1 May due to Covid.
Nearly half of the total infections in the latest outbreak have been reported in northeastern Jilin province, with 4,605 cases since March 1, when the first clusters of cases in Jilin’s border city Yanbian were identified, according to the provincial government.
All 24 million residents of the north-eastern province were placed under quarantine orders on Monday. It is the first time China has restricted an entire province since the Wuhan and Hebei lockdown at the beginning of the pandemic.
Jilin residents have been banned from moving around, and anyone wanting to leave the province must apply for police permission.
China has seen relatively fewer cases of Covid due to its strict zero-Covid policy, where it resorts to rapid lockdowns, mass testing and travel restrictions whenever clusters have emerged.
However the rapid transmissibility of the Omicron variant has made sticking to that approach increasingly challenging.
Chinese officials have been under pressure to bring outbreaks under control and have been reprimanded by higher administrations for “poor performance” as cases grow.
China has dismissed at least 26 government officials this month in cities where outbreaks have occurred, including a mayor and a director of municipal health commission in Jilin province, and a vice mayor and a deputy director of the provincial police department in Guangdong.
