Posted on Oct 25, 2021 7:59 AMUpdated Oct 25, 2021, 2:13 PM
China’s zero tolerance policy for Covid-19 is once again put to the test of the Delta variant. China on Monday imposed lockdowns on thousands of residents in the north of the country, set up massive testing campaigns and asked residents of Beijing to reduce their trips, due to a rebound in cases of infection.
Authorities on Monday reported 39 new Covid-19 patients and warned of the risk that the virus will spread further in the days to come.
Marathon canceled
Attributed to the highly contagious Delta variant, the new epidemic outbreak has already spread in eleven provinces as well as in the capital Beijing, which is preparing to organize the Winter Olympics in a hundred days.
More than 100 cases of contamination have been confirmed in the space of a week, the majority of which is linked to travel by tourist groups during the recent Chinese holiday period. If the figures may seem derisory by European standards, they panic the Chinese authorities who are trying to nip any reappearance of the virus in the bud, after having quickly succeeded in containing the epidemic in the spring of 2020.
As always, China is deploying great means. The Beijing municipality has asked residents to avoid “non-essential” trips outside the capital as well as large-scale gatherings. The marathon, which was to be held on Sunday with some 30,000 runners, has been canceled. Marathon also canceled in Wuhan, the first city to be hit by the virus, last Sunday.
In Ejin, Inner Mongolia, where 43 cases have been identified in recent days, 35,000 people are in confinement for two weeks, as are the 10,000 tourists present in the city. In Gansu (Northwest), buses and taxis have been suspended in Lanzhou, the provincial capital, while all public gatherings have been banned.
1 billion Chinese vaccinated
While extremely strict countries like Australia, New Zealand or Singapore gradually abandon their zero tolerance policy and timidly reopen themselves to the world, China remains determined to eliminate any sporadic outbreaks, especially in the run-up to the Games. Winter Olympics to be held in February 2022. But the Delta variant is proving to be a particularly tough enemy.
While the country has almost closed its borders since March 2020 and implemented some of the strictest sanitary conditions in the world (tests before departure and upon arrival in China, two to three weeks of strict quarantine in hotels, etc. ), the Delta variant succeeds in passing between the stitches of the net. In the past five months, authorities have succeeded in quelling the outbreaks on three occasions (in Canton in May, in Nanjing this summer, in Fujian province in September), but these outbreaks are breaking out more and more frequently, raising the question. the relevance of a zero tolerance policy in the face of a pathogen that manages to cross Chinese defenses.
Beijing does not intend, for the time being, to change its strategy at all. China is stepping up tests, isolating positive cases, seeking to trace the chains of contamination and speed up vaccination. About 75.6% of the Chinese population had received full doses of the vaccine, or some 1.068 billion people. Beijing is starting to inject a third dose in adults whose last dose was at least six months old. On the outskirts of Canton, in the south of the country, a vast quarantine center with 5,000 rooms and capable of operating in a closed circuit has just been built in three months to accommodate international travelers. Far from any sign of slackening.
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