China faces its worst epidemic outbreak

AFP and Reuters

Newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, May 10, 2022, p. 13

Beijing. Millions of Beijing residents began working from home yesterday, after authorities tightened anti-Covid measures and gave the Chinese capital of 22 million people the image of a ghost town.

China has been facing the worst epidemic outbreak since the beginning of 2020 for two months. Although the number of infections is minimal compared to the world level, the authorities strictly apply the zero covid policy and impose confinements in entire cities as soon as some cases are detected.

After Shanghai, the most populous city in the country confined since the beginning of April, Beijing has been under travel restrictions for a week and many public places – such as restaurants, cafes, gyms, among others – are closed.

Yesterday the authorities strictly limited access to non-essential services in the Chaoyang district, the most dynamic and populated in the capital.

The bustling commercial district of Sanlitun, in eastern Beijing, was deserted yesterday. The Apple store, for example, was ordered to close minutes after opening its doors.

I don’t feel comfortable with so few people around meA cleaning worker named Wang told AFP while waiting to enter the restaurant where she works.

Beijing yesterday announced 49 new cases of coronavirus in the last 24 hours.

The health situation in the capital is serious and complicatedtold the press a city official, Xu Hejian, who urged the inhabitants not to leave Beijing, except for an imperative reason.

Authorities in Shanghai have tightened restrictions despite falling cases. The confinement in this city begins to affect the population after 40 days of restrictions and the city is the scene of unusual events, such as clashes in the middle of the street or the flight of workers from a factory.

The number of daily infections was below 4,000 yesterday, after having exceeded 25,000 at the end of April.

The current epidemic outbreak has killed more than 500 people in Shanghai, according to official data. In total, China has officially recorded some 5,000 deaths due to the virus since the start of the pandemic.

The bells of the Washington National Cathedral rang a thousand times yesterday in tribute to the victims of covid, as the United States approaches the threshold of one million deaths related to the pandemic.

The United States is the country that officially registers the highest number of deaths in the world from coronavirus – ahead of Brazil, India or Russia – with 995 thousand fatalities registered as of Monday by Johns Hopkins University.

The tribute began at 6:00 p.m. and was broadcast live on YouTube. Each chime represented a thousand deaths from the pandemic.

The building’s funeral bell had already rung when the United States exceeded previous symbolic thresholds, such as in September 2020, by exceeding 200,000 deaths.

The United States has been registering a rise in the number of cases for several weeks in a context of lifting the obligation to wear face masks, now simply advised indoors for most of the country.

However, the number of deaths related to the pandemic has decreased in recent months, after surpassing 900,000 deaths last February.

When the half-million deaths were exceeded in February 2021, President Joe Biden lamented a balance greater than that of World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War together.

The covid-19 pandemic left between 13 and 17 million deaths worldwide between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2021, according to recent calculations by the World Health Organization, while Johns Hopkins University estimates 517 662,744 million confirmed cases and 6,252,738 deaths.