On Sunday, Chinese officials recorded 1,807 new symptomatic COVID cases, more than three times the amount reported the day before and the largest number in two years.
According to China’s National Health Commission, the northeastern province of Jilin accounted for 78 percent of the national total. The number easily surpassed Saturday’s count, which had already set a new high for cases since the country’s first outbreak in early 2020, prompting yet another round of lockdowns.
“[The increase] demonstrated that some local areas, faced with a rapid rise in epidemic, lacked the capacity to expand medical resources, resulting in limited admission of infections to centralized facilities within a short period of time,” a Jilin provincial official said at a news conference on Sunday.
To keep virus case counts near to zero, Beijing has instructed its locals to follow the “dynamic clearance” policy, which has led to numerous localities canceling group events, starting rounds of mass testing, and canceling in-person school classes.
People lined up to get tested for COVID-19 in Changchun.
According to local officials and state media sources, authorities in Changchun, the provincial capital, have been conducting mass testing and working on converting an expo center into a temporary hospital with 1,500 beds.
Shenzhen, China’s southern tech metropolis, reported 60 new local cases with verified symptoms on Saturday, the city’s greatest daily increase since the first outbreak was stopped in early 2020.
Shenzhen’s nine districts have prohibited indoor dining, shut down a flurry of indoor entertainment facilities, and mandated that enterprises have staff work from home if remote working is permitted from March 14 to 18, with exceptions for those in critical areas.
Chinese officials reported 1,807 new symptomatic COVID cases — the highest amount in two years.
Six officials from the local government or Communist Party authorities in the southern city of Dongguan have been fired for failing to prevent and control COVID, according to state media.
Although China’s current case count is significantly lower than that of many other countries, the rising number may hinder the country’s efforts to contain the disease as swiftly as feasible.
After requiring medical workers to swab members of the public using nucleic acid tests that need labs to process samples in the past two years, the country where COVID originated is altering its testing system in response to the spread of the Omicron strain.
A makeshift hospital for COVID-19 patients at Changchun International Conference & Exhibition Center on March 12, 2022.
For the first time, health officials stated the general people will be able to purchase such kits in stores and online, and on Saturday, they approved five COVID-19 antigen kits created by local companies for self-testing.
“To deal with how Omicron spreads, we need to promote a model of antigen screening and nucleic acid tests, allowing the public to purchase tests on their own, which is conducive to early detection,” Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan was quoted as saying at a government meeting on Saturday by state broadcaster CCTV.