Xi’s Stronger Virus Controls Signal Anxiety Over Second Wave
Xi’s Stronger Virus Controls Signal Anxiety Over Second Wave
(Bloomberg) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping called for strengthened controls in China’s northeastern provinces as a growing cluster of infections near the Russia and North Korea borders threatens to become a second wave.
China will not let go of its hard-earned results in curbing its epidemic, and will continue to prevent imported cases while containing any rebounds of infection domestically, Xi said at a politburo meeting on Thursday according to state media reports.
The growing attention on the new cluster, whose origins officials have not yet been able to determine, signals China’s anxiety over a resurgence of infection after it managed to wrest control of an epidemic that sickened over 84,000 people and killed over 4,600.
Three cities in two provinces -- Shulan, Jilin and Shenyang -- have now reported 29 new infections since May 7. Transport services in Shulan and the city of Jilin have been halted while residents are not allowed to leave the cities without a negative virus test. Schools that were scheduled to re-open have now been closed again.
Pressure to contain the infections is even greater with China’s annual political meetings scheduled for later this month in Beijing after being delayed from their usual March date. Thousands of political delegates will gather in the capital to endorse the government’s agenda and it’s essential that the central leadership projects stability and calm during this period.
In his politburo remarks, Xi said that control measures should be ramped up in Beijing ahead of the meetings.
China reported four new coronavirus cases on Friday in Jilin city, taking the total number of infections in the northeastern provinces to 29. While it’s unclear if the cases are all linked and how they first emerged, the region is situated close to Russia, whose outbreak has now escalated into one of Europe’s worst.
The first reported infection in China’s new northeastern cluster is a female laundry worker who works at Shulan city’s police station, but health officials say that they can’t determine how she got infected or whether she is really the first infection of the cluster.
There’s a chance the worker was infected by the virus lingering on clothes in the laundry room, but it’s also possible that she was infected by someone with a longer incubation period who’s yet to show symptoms, Wu Zunyou, China’s chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an interview with state television this week.
“It’s very challenging to conclude who transmitted the virus,” Wu said, calling for genetic sequential screening for the clustered cases and other confirmed cases who arrived from Russia to figure out how they’re linked.
Shenyang city, in neighboring Liaoning province, has asked all who returned from Jilin city since April 22 to be put under government-run quarantine for 21 days, during which three nucleic acid tests will be administered to each person.
The city, which has three cases linked to the cluster, has also pushed back indefinitely the date schools were meant to restart, according to a local government statement Thursday.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
With assistance from Bloomberg