BEIJING — China reported two new deaths from
COVID-19 on Monday, both elderly
Beijing residents, as several major cities
persisted with strict virus curbs despite a much-touted recent loosening.
اضافة اعلان
The last major economy wedded to a zero-COVID
policy, Chinese authorities have continued to impose snap lockdowns, mass
testing and lengthy quarantines in response to emerging outbreaks.
Despite the central government this month announcing
its most significant easing of the measures so far, authorities in many areas
have stuck to hardline curbs as the number of new cases has spiked.
Monday’s deaths involved a 91-year-old woman with a
history of stroke and Alzheimer’s disease, and an 88-year-old man with a
history of cancer, bronchitis, and stroke, local authorities said.
On Sunday, Beijing announced China’s first COVID
fatality since May, an 87-year-old man whose mild case worsened after he
contracted a bacterial infection.
New cases in the capital jumped to 962 on Monday
from 621 the day before, as authorities maintained a patchwork of restrictions
in an effort to extinguish emerging flare-ups.
Nearly 600 areas of the city are currently
“high-risk”, a designation that typically requires residents to isolate for
several days in their housing units or move to state quarantine facilities.
In some neighborhoods, schools have been ordered to
move classes online and office employees told to work from home.
Hardline curbs were also in place in cities
including the southern industrial hub of
Guangzhou — where tens of thousands of
new cases have emerged in the past week — and northern Shijiazhuang, where
officials have ordered residents in six districts to undergo mass testing.
Case spike
China recorded around 27,000
new domestic cases on Monday, according to the
National Health Commission — a
tiny fraction of its vast population but a steep increase for a country
accustomed to figures in the dozens or low hundreds.
While the zero-COVID policy has generally kept the
number of new cases low, the approach has been tested in recent months by the
emergence of virus variants that spread faster than officials can extinguish
them.
The strategy has also stifled economic growth,
isolated Beijing on the international stage and even sparked rare protests in a
country where dissent is routinely crushed.
Earlier this month, the government issued 20 rules
for “optimizing” zero-COVID, reducing quarantine times for overseas arrivals
and simplifying a system for assessing the risk of transmission, among other
tweaks.
Multiple Chinese cities then cancelled routine mass
COVID tests in a move that added to hopes of an eventual reopening.
But Asian markets fell Monday as Sunday’s COVID
death sparked fears officials would reimpose strict, economically painful
restrictions.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell nearly 2 percent —
extending a sell-off at the end of last week — while Shanghai was also down.
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