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 Authorities have called for blanket testing in Jilin, with
provincial Communist Party secretary Jing Junhai urging health
departments to ensure "not a single person is missed", the official
Jilin Daily newspaper reported.
Jilin registered 1,456 new domestically transmitted COVID-19
infections with confirmed symptoms on March 15, while new cases
totalled 1,860 nationwide, National Health Commission (NHC) data
showed.
Though Jilin's infections had halved compared to a day earlier, it
was still over 1,000 for a fourth consecutive day, and Jing
described the efforts to stamp out China's worst outbreak in two
years as having entered "a critical stage of the last-ditch battle".
The provincial health authority said last week that the virus that
caused the current outbreak arrived from overseas, without
specifying how exactly it had entered the province.
Russia's far east suffered a recent spike in COVID-19 cases, with
new daily infections in Vladivistok, around 160 km (100 miles) from
the Jilin border, peaking in mid-February at over 1,500.
The number of cases in North Korea is unknown, though an independent
U.N. human rights investigator has warned that millions of vaccines
need to be supplied to avert a humanitarian disaster in the
reclusive country.
Jilin province, which has banned its 24 million residents from
leaving without notifying local police, has added eight temporary
hospitals with over 10,000 beds in total and two temporary
quarantine facilities, and is preparing to add five more quarantine
sites with over 27,000 rooms, state television reported on
Wednesday.
The city of Changchun, Jilin's provincial capital, which since last
week has restricted each household to sending out one person to buy
necessities every two days, urged residents on Wednesday to reduce
going out and choose online shopping whenever possible.
TIGHT MEASURES
While China's case numbers are far lower than many other countries,
authorities continue to implement stringent restrictions as soon as
new outbreaks occur.
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NHC spokesperson Mi Feng told a regular briefing
on Tuesday that the current outbreak had already
spread to 28 regions, adding that the situation
was "severe and complicated".
Even regions with relatively few new infections
have turned the screws. Shanghai, which saw five
new local symptomatic transmissions and nearly
200 domestically transmitted asymptomatic
carriers on Tuesday, was mass-testing residents
of apartment blocks throughout the city.
Tesla is suspending production at its Shanghai factory on Wednesday
and Thursday, according to a notice sent internally and to
suppliers, while the notice did not give a reason for the stoppage.
Apple Inc supplier Foxconn said on Wednesday that it was able to
restart some production and operations in the southern city of
Shenzhen, which also experienced an increase in local infections
this month, on condition that its employees live and work in a
bubble arrangement.
State media have staunchly defended China's "dynamic clearance"
COVID-19 controls, with the Communist Party-owned tabloid the Global
Times saying in an editorial that China's achievements "may go down
the drain" if controls are relaxed.
But analysts warn that as the cost of containment rises, something
may have to give eventually.
"Given Omicron's very high transmissibility, this tension between
containment and economic stabilisation is coming to a head," said
Michael Hirson, China analyst with the Eurasia Group, a U.S. based
think-tank.
"In a scenario where China has to maintain the current level of
stringency, which seems like the baseline for this year, there will
be a significant drag on the economy," he added.
(Reporting by David Stanway, Roxanne Liu and Albee Zhang; Editing by
Simon Cameron-Moore and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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