News Covid spike in China, 9 million in lockdown

[VisionofMilotic]

China appears to be suffering her biggest outbreak of Covid since the onset of the pandemic, with the number of infections jumping from 300 cases a day, to 1,000 within a week. It is thought to be the omnicron variant at this time. While more contagious, the silver lining to the rain cloud is that the symptoms aren't as strong as in other cases that we have seen.

One of the areas where we know of new infections is in the Jilin province, surrounding Changchun. There were atleast 74 cases at the Jilin Agricultural Science and Tech University, and in response 6,000 people were moved into quarantine.

The Chinese government has ordered a lockdown for the millions living in Changchun, in an attempt to combat the virus. Make shift infirmies are being set up there to try to accommodate extra people, so that the sickest can be prioritized at the hospital. Clinics like this will also be built in the eastern port city of Qingdao. Half a million people living in Yucheng in the Eastern province of Shandong are going into lockdown as well.

In Shanghai school children have returned to learning from remote locations. Non-essential business will be closed, international flights are being diverted to prevent overflow at quarantine hotels, and residents must stay in their homes, with the exception of leaving for food and other emergency situations, and undergo rounds of testing.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ons-top-1-000-for-the-first-time-in-two-years

Keep China in your thoughts and hearts right now, and stay safe yourself everyone.

 

[Ivysaur]

There are two major problems here. One is that Chinese vaccines, which don't use mRNA, are less effective against the virus in general and the Omicron variant in particular. And the second is that the repeated lockdowns in order to achieve a 'zero-covid' status have resulted in far less 'hybrid protection' (vaccine + antibodies from previous infection) than most Western countries in which a pretty large percentage of the population had caught it at some point. Not only that, but the strong measures against any case at all made a lot of people choose not to get vaccinated, including a lot of older people, because they reckoned that their odds of ever encountering the virus were negligible.

The combination of the two means that Chinese citizens are very weakly protected against what has turned out to be one of the most contagious pathogens known to man. And once it starts spreading, keeping it under control is nearly impossible- far harder than with the original strain. So the blunt lockdown hammer has to be wielded even more aggressively than before. Sorry for all the people who will now suffer this... but this is the result of a series of political and personal choices.

 

[Corrin]

I think they could improve on the vaccines, but I agree with locking down. It's very effective in getting rid of it quickly and to be honest, if we did that now in the west I think it would be beneficial.
Honestly, these people going on about their "rights" and the governments being so wishy washy is why our healthcare systems are buckling and why people needing major surgery are put on the backburner.

 

[tigertron]

China did well to keep Covid to a minimum all this time, but with Omicron being very infectious then it's only a matter of time before China ends up like the rest of the world. Thank goodness it's not the Delta variant that's spreading like wild fire anymore.