CHINA PINS HOPES ON SCREENING WITH SHOT AT ‘SOCIETAL COVID’
▶ Shanghai begins testing to lift local lockdowns, but Beijing residents stock up on essentials
The authorities in Shanghai will start rounds of coronavirus testing over the next few days to determine which neighbourhoods can safely be allowed limited freedom of movement.
But in Beijing, the Chinese capital, residents were waiting to learn whether the city would go into lockdown.
China reported 14,222 new cases yesterday, most of which were asymptomatic. The country has reported its largest outbreak since cases of the virus were first reported in Wuhan in late 2019.
The vice head of Shanghai’s health committee, Zhao Dandan, announced yesterday that the city would begin another round of testing over the next few days to determine which districts were at lower risk. Areas declared to have achieved “societal zero Covid” could have limited freedom.
The phrase, used by the Chinese health authorities, refers to the stage at which positive cases are identified only in people already under surveillance, such as those in centralised quarantine or who are considered to be close contacts.
At this point, the chain of transmission at community level is considered to have been broken.
Shanghai’s total lockdown has been in place for about a month and – with few exceptions – residents are confined to their homes at all times.
Officials reported 48 deaths yesterday, bringing the total in the city to at least 238.
Beijing is testing millions of residents after coronavirus cases were discovered at the weekend. The city reported 34 new cases yesterday, of which three were without symptoms.
In the past few days, nervous residents of the capital have started to stockpile essentials after trouble in Shanghai, where people struggled to obtain food during lockdown.
Beijing officials were quick to promise that shops would be well stocked. On Tuesday, they said they were monitoring the Xinfadi wholesale market, from which the city buys the vast majority of its fruit and vegetables.
For now, officials have confined only places in which positive cases have been found. Yesterday, the city’s Tongzhou district suspended classes at all schools and nurseries.
Given that China, for now, remains committed to its zero-tolerance approach, “I do think we will continue to see the use of these lockdowns across the country,” said Karen Grepin, a public health expert at the University of Hong Kong.
“If anything, the Omicron variant has made it more challenging to control the virus and thus more stringent measures are needed if the goal is to continue to strive for local elimination.”
Elsewhere, Mexico’s government has said Covid-19 has become endemic in the country, meaning that the authorities will treat it as a seasonally recurring disease.
Mexico never enforced the use of face masks, and the state’s few partial shutdowns of businesses and activities were lifted weeks ago.
“It [coronavirus] is now retreating almost completely,” said Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
The country’s death rate has dropped sharply and new case numbers have also declined. But that may be because Mexico, which never carried out much screening, now offers even fewer tests.
It has recorded about 325,000 test-confirmed fatalities, but government reviews of death certificates suggest the real toll is closer to 490,000. About 90 per cent of adult Mexicans have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.
In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called a meeting with state chief ministers yesterday to review preparedness against a new wave of infection.
Daily cases touched a six-week high, with the country – which has been among the worst-hit nations globally – recording 2,927 new cases yesterday. This was the highest one-day jump since March 13, pushing the total official tally past 43 million, according to government data.
Deaths rose marginally, taking total fatalities to 523,654.
The increase in government oversight underscores Mr Modi’s efforts to avoid another outbreak on the scale seen last summer, when daily cases topped 400,000, overwhelming hospitals and crematoriums.
As the deadly Delta variant ripped through the nation of about 1.4 billion people last year, some citizens resorted to pleading for bottled oxygen on social media.
Last week, New Delhi reinstated mask mandates and stepped up surveillance for new variants.
This month, the highly transmissible XE variant was detected in Mumbai.
While currently no stress signs have been noted in India’s healthcare system, a rise in infections could thwart a return to normality in which schools, offices and cinemas reopened.
“The filtered daily growth rate of new cases in India stood at 9.5 per cent on April 23, having risen steadily since turning positive on April 13,” a Covid tracker developed by the UK’s University of Cambridge said on Saturday.
But the current surge looks “much more muted than the Omicron wave which took off towards the end of last year,” it said.
Shanghai’s lockdown has been in place for about a month, and most residents are confined to their homes at all times