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Mainland China recorded its first two deaths from Covid-19 in more than a year on Saturday March 19, underscoring the threat posed to the country by the Omicron variant, already responsible for the largest wave of contamination since the start of the pandemic. pandemic.
The two deaths occurred in Jilin (in the northeast of the country), the province most affected by the current wave, said the National Health Commission. Authorities recorded 4,051 new infections across the country on Saturday, and 4,365 the day before, more than half of them in Jilin province.
These are the first deaths reported since January 26, 2021 in mainland China, excluding Hong Kong and Macau. They bring the toll of the pandemic to 4,638 dead, while Hong Kongalso plagued by a resurgence of Covid-19deplores more than 200 deaths per day.
Even if we can doubt the official figures, even by multiplying them by two or ten, the health record of the Chinese strategy is excellent: thanks to its drastic measures, China has avoided millions of deaths, reports our correspondent in Shanghai, Leo Cirah.
An epidemic hitherto kept under control
China, where the first cases of coronavirus appeared at the end of 2019, had kept the epidemic under control thanks to strict border controls, long quarantines, massive screening campaigns and targeted confinements as even recently since some 100 million Chinese are asked to stay at home or limit their movements.
President Xi this week reaffirmed his “zero Covid” strategy, undermined with the arrival of the Omicron variant. A so-called dynamic zero-Covid strategy with case-by-case adaptation, intended to avoid the total containment measures taken at the start of the epidemic.
The commission recommends four new directions in its epidemic prevention strategy.
1. Mild cases need to be isolated centrally (quarantine hotel), but no longer need to be hospitalized. pic.twitter.com/zLLeh7ZHJ1— Stephane Lagarde (@StephaneLagarde) March 16, 2022
In recent weeks, official sources have suggested that China may at some point have to live with Covid-19, as other countries do, and have worried about the impact of broad lockdowns on the economy.
Because today, China does not know how to get out of this pandemic: its population has very little natural immunity, its vaccines are not very effective, and its elderly population is poorly vaccinated: theHong Kong example is cause for concern, today, the Chinese territory of 7 and a half million inhabitants, is the one that records the most deaths per inhabitant in the world.
►To read: Covid-19: rebound of the pandemic in Asia as health measures are relaxed
(and with AFP)
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