China records its first two coronavirus deaths in over a year

China registered its first two deaths from the covid-19 coronavirus in more than a year on Saturday, amid 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 confinement of millions in several cities.

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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.

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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.

Likewise, the health authority reported 4,051 new cases on Saturday, down from the 4,365 reported the previous day.

A volunteer guides residents at a makeshift nucleic acid testing site, following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at a residential compound in Shanghai, China. (Photo: REUTERS/Xihao Jiang). (STRINGER/)

“Covid zero” with nuances

Thanks to a severe “covid zero” strategy, consisting of strict border controls, long quarantines for international arrivals and early confinements, China has managed to keep the virus at bay since the end of the first wave.

But the contagious omicron variant is putting this strategy in trouble. The most populous country in the world has gone from reporting less than a hundred cases a day three weeks ago, to a minimum of more than 1,000 cases a day during the last week.

These are very low incidences compared to other countries, but not negligible in Chinawhose communist leadership has made managing the pandemic a matter of paramount 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 You will have to start living with covid-19 at some point, as most countries in the world have done.

President Xi Jinping said on 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 development and Social”.

Thus, if on previous occasions complete confinements were decreed for any outbreak, local authorities opted for more varied and less drastic strategies.

Some remained faithful to the confinements, such as Shenzhen (southeast), a large technology center with 17.5 million inhabitants, which, 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, in China continental new hospital places are being created for fear that the virus could put the health system under pressure.

Jilin province, on the border with North Korea, has 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.

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Source: Elcomercio