China registered this Saturday its first two deaths from Covid-19 in more than a yearamid a rebound in the pandemic linked to the Omicron variant that puts the country’s “Covid zero” strategy in trouble.
The National Health Commission notified this Saturday the first two deaths since January 26, 2021, both registered in the northeastern province of Jilin, the most affected by this wave that has caused the lockdown of millions in various cities.
With these two deaths, the official balance rises to 4,638 fatalities since China first detected the coronavirus in the central city of wuhan in December 2019.
The two new deaths were buried in the daily report of the Health Commission and barely mentioned by the state-controlled media.
Authorities in Jilin later said that both victims were men, aged 65 and 87, and both had underlying health problems associated with their advanced age.
Also, the health authority reported 4,051 new cases of Covid-19 on Saturdaydown from the 4,365 reported on Friday.
“Covid zero” with nuances
Thanks to a severe “Covid zero” strategy, consisting of tight border controls, long quarantines for international arrivals and early lockdowns, China has managed to keep the virus at bay since the end of the first wave.
But the contagious Omicron variant is jeopardizing this strategy. The world’s most populous country has gone from reporting less than a hundred cases a day three weeks ago, to a low of more than 1,000 cases a day in the last week.
These are very low incidences compared to other countries, but not negligible in China, whose communist leadership has made the management of the pandemic a matter of capital importance.
For Beijing, the low rate of infections and mortality compared to most countries in the world prove the strength of its governance model.
In recent weeks, some official sources have suggested that China will have to start living with Covid-19 at some point, as most countries in the world have done.
President Xi Jinping He said Thursday that the country should persist in its “zero covid” strategy to “stop the spread of the epidemic as quickly as possible,” but also called for “minimizing the impact of the epidemic on economic and social development.”
Thus, if on previous occasions complete confinements were decreed for any outbreak, local authorities opted for more varied and less drastic strategies.
Some kept loyal to lockdowns, like Shenzhena large technological center with 17.5 million inhabitants that, however, relaxed these measures after Xi’s words.
The economic capital of the country, Shanghai, on the other hand, decreed online teaching and has deployed a massive test campaign, but has avoided total closure for now.
field hospitals
As a result of this latest uptick, the authorities freed up hospital beds and annulled the provision by which all those positive for Covid had to be admitted to a health center.
At the same time, new hospital beds are being created in mainland China for fear the virus could put the health system under strain.
Jilin province, on the border with North Koreahas built eight temporary hospitals and two quarantine centers to deal with the thousands of cases in the last week.
State media showed images of dozens of giant cranes assembling temporary medical facilities in that province, which has only about 23,000 beds for 24 million residents.
Beijing is also closely monitoring the situation in the semi-autonomous territory of Hong Kong, where the pandemic has skyrocketed with tens of thousands of daily infections and a high level of mortality due to low vaccination of the elderly population.
