China’s new cases defy zero-Covid strategy

Mainland logs 214 infections amid calls for ‘strengthening epidemic controls’

A surge in Covid-19 infections is occurring across China, despite the country’s “zero-tolerance” approach to dealing with outbreaks.

The mainland yesterday reported 214 new cases, with the most, 69, in Guangdong on the border with Hong Kong, which has been recording tens of thousands of cases every day. Another 54 cases were reported in Jilin and 46 in Shandong.

In his annual report to the country’s top legislature, Premier Li Keqiang said China needed to “constantly refine epidemic containment” but gave no indication of easing the “zerotolerance” strategy.

Li called for accelerating vaccine development and “strengthening epidemic controls” in cities where travellers and goods arrived from abroad.

“Zero tolerance” requires quarantines and lockdowns of entire communities and sometimes even cities when as few as a handful of cases have been detected.

Officials credit the approach – along with a vaccination rate of more than 80 per cent – with helping to prevent a major nationwide outbreak, but critics said the policy was taking a major toll on the economy and preventing the population from building up natural immunity.

No new cases were reported in Beijing yesterday and the city was largely back to normal, although mask-wearing is maintained in public places.

One area that continues to feel the effects of tight Covid-19 control is the religious sector. Three of Beijing’s best-known Catholic churches, Buddhist temples and mosques said they had been ordered to remain closed since January, with no date given on reopening.

Even before the pandemic, such institutions were under heavy pressure from the administration to follow through on demands from President Xi Jinping that all religious centres be purged of outside influence.

Some 3,837 people across the mainland are undergoing treatment for Covid-19 at present, many of them infected with the Omicron strain.