China’s Daily Covid Cases Top 20,000 as Isolation Expands
Infections continue emerging in locked down Shanghai and Jilin. Arena showing China’s global stature now an isolation facility.
(Bloomberg) -- China reported 20,472 new Covid-19 cases for Tuesday, driven by surging infections in Shanghai where local officials are building the world’s largest makeshift isolation facility to help contain the outbreak there.
The National Exhibition and Convention Center, a 1.2 million square-meter space known for hosting international auto shows and other massive events, will be converted to house more than 40,000 people, according to local media reports. The effort shows how far the financial hub will go to fight the virus, on top of the lockdown that has kept its 25 million residents confined to their homes.
The current outbreak in China has already surpassed the number of infections found in the early days of the pandemic, before testing was easily available, and encompasses a much broader swath of the nation. While President Xi Jinping is committed to getting the conflagration under control, his request to limit economic consequences is getting harder to do as the wildly transmissible omicron variant continues to spread despite intense efforts to stop it.
Covid Still Raging in Chinese Province Despite Month of Lockdown
The number of cases continues to rise in Shanghai and Jilin, a northeastern province that has been locked down since mid-March, showing the difficulty of halting the spread of omicron once it has deeply penetrated a population. There were 311 local infections and 16,766 asymptomatic cases reported in Shanghai on Tuesday, and another 973 infections and 1,798 asymptomatic cases in Jilin, according to the National Health Commission.
CHINA INSIGHT: Shanghai’s Vulnerability Shows Reopening Risk
Rumors spread on social media that some in Shanghai who didn’t qualify were able to get traffic permits to override lockdown restrictions, then drove to buy food at shops including Metro AG’s stores. A Metro mall outlet in Shanghai halted operations there amid a surge in visitors with traffic permits on Wednesday, according to an official notice on the company’s Weibo account.
Case counts are rising even faster on the outskirts of Shanghai, though the numbers remain low. The 7-day average increased to 63 from 19 in Anhui province, while climbing to 59 from 21 a week earlier in Jiangsu.
Shanghai remains the hotspot for the current flareup, despite indefinitely extending its lockdown of its 25 million people. Originally intended to be carried out in two parts, the rising number of infections led to a continuation of the restrictions in the eastern portion of the city that were initially expected to be lifted last week and the western region that was supposed to exit the initiative yesterday.
Its duration will depend on the success of the prevention and control strategy, and the extent to which the measures are implemented, Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a briefing on Wednesday.
The city will conduct another mandatory round of city-wide testing starting today, said Gu Honghui, deputy secretary general of the municipal government, said at a briefing. People living in housing compounds where infections have been reported since April 1 will undergo laboratory testing, while those complexes without any cases will do at-home antigen tests, he said. Delivery people must get both types of tests daily, said Liu Min, vice director of Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce.
Converting one of the world’s largest convention compounds into an isolation facility is a sign to the world that China isn’t shifting away from its Covid Zero target, even as the rest of the world has decided to live with the virus. Shanghai’s current effort surpasses the number of beds provided by Wuhan’s makeshift hospitals built at the peak of the crisis, with no other country devoting as much space to isolation.
The Shanghai venue, known as the NECC, traditionally hosted the annual China International Import Expo, an event started under Xi meant to showcase China’s growing openness and power in international trade.
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
With assistance from Bloomberg
