China vows to enhance medical resources, crack down on excessive antiCOVID approaches
China has reported a total of 253,000 COVID-19 cases since November 1 during the latest epidemic, and many places in the country are facing the severest and most complicated outbreak in three years, national health officials said on Tuesday, vowing to enhance medical resources and crack down on excessive anti-epidemic measures adopted by some local governments.
The ongoing epidemic is witnessing growing infections. The average daily new cases this week reached 22,200, nearly double last week’s level, Hu Xiang, an official of the national epidemic prevention and control bureau, said at a press conference on Tuesday.
Hu noted that the epidemic, which has hit many provinces and regions, showed complex transmission chains.
Citing experts who closely follow situation of China’s epidemic, some media outlets predicted on Tuesday that this round of the epidemic would continue to expand until the middle of December.
At the press conference, Hu pointed out that the hidden transmission and the strong transmissibility of Omicron variants make it more difficult to screen and track cases at an early stage.
To prevent excessive measures adopted by some local authorities, health officials vowed to strengthen crackdowns on such approaches in order to guarantee full implementation of the 20 measures for optimizing epidemic response.
They will mainly focus on improper moves like unreasonably locking down schools and suspending classes, unreasonably locking down factories to suspend production, suspending traffic without approval, unreasonably suspending medical services and locking down an area for too long.
This round of the epidemic in China is witnessing a growing number of infections related to community transmission.
In response, Hu explained at the press conference that the growing community infections were due to the hidden and rapid transmissibility of Omicron, making it more difficult to discover cases if normal epidemic prevention and control management measures were not fully implemented.