China hit by worst outbreak since start of crisis

Nanjing: China’s worst coronavirus outbreak since the start of the pandemic has escalated with dozens more cases around the country, the sealing-off of one city and the punishment of its local leaders.

Since the initial outbreak was tamed last year, China’s people had lived virtually free of the virus, with strict border controls and local distancing and quarantine measures stamping out scattered flare-ups.

Now the country is on high alert as an outbreak connected to the international airport in the eastern city of

Nanjing touched at least 17 provinces.

China reported 71 new cases of Covid-19 from local transmission yesterday, more than half of them in coastal Jiangsu province, of which Nanjing is the capital.

In Wuhan, the central city where the world’s first cases of Covid-19 were identified in late 2019, mass testing has shown some of its newly reported cases have a high degree of similarity to cases discovered in Jiangsu province.

Those cases have been identified as being caused by the highly transmissible Delta variant that first was identified in India.

Another hotspot was emerging in the city of Zhangjiajie. The city ordered residential communities sealed on Sunday, preventing people from leaving their homes. In a subsequent order on Tuesday, officials said no one could leave the city.

The city government’s Communist Party disciplinary committee yesterday issued a list of local officials who “had a negative impact” on pandemic prevention and control work who would be punished.