Thirty million people in 13 cities across China have been put back into a COVID-19 lockdown with hazmat-wearing officials back on the streets on a scale not seen since the pandemic began in yet more evidence that the country’s Zero-Covid strategy is a complete failure. MailOnline has more.
China reported 5,280 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, more than double the previous day’s tally, as the highly transmissible Omicron variant spread across a country that has stuck tightly to a Zero-Covid strategy.
That approach, which pivots on hard localised lockdowns and has left China virtually cut off from the outside world for two years, appears stretched to the limit as Omicron finds its way into communities.
At least 13 cities nationwide were fully locked down as of Tuesday, and several others had partial lockdowns, with some 15,000 infections reported nationwide in March.
Scenes of closed neighbourhoods, panic buying and police cordons cast back to the early phase of the pandemic, which first emerged in China in late 2019.
Although cases from the chaotic initial outbreak in Wuhan in early 2020 are widely believed to have been under-reported, life since then had largely returned to normal in China under its strict Zero-Covid approach.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Matthew Lynn in the Spectator says China’s zero Covid strategy is a threat to the global economy.
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