Despite being the first country where the very first COVID outbreak began, China has been through relatively good times. But at the beginning of 2022, cases of COVID infections start to surge again in the Asian country.
China seemed to had no other option but to reimpose COVID restrictions in a few of its cities amid the new outbreak, as The Hill reveals. The publication says that the country operates under a “zero tolerance” strategy – residents of the capital Beijing are urged to stay at home, schools from Shangai had been closed, an industrial city has been shut down, etc.
588 new infections over 24 hours
The same source says that Chinese officials revealed a total of 588 infections with the coronavirus occurring over 24 hours that ended on Friday. Luckily, there were no deaths reported.
Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, China reported a number of 116,902 infections and more than 4,600 deaths related to the virus, according to information brought by worldometers.info. The same source reveals that more than 103,700 patients had been recovered. As there was a massive gap between the first outbreaks in the country and how the situation looks now, seeing a new wave of COVID restrictions was indeed surprising.
Ting Lu, who is Nomura’s chief China economist, spoke about the economic costs of the “zero Covid strategy”, stating as quoted by CNBC.com:
“Amid rounds of lockdowns and travel bans across China,” he said, “more individuals are feeling the pinch, becoming worn out, unemployed or underemployed, and have drained their savings to a level at which they have to reduce spending.”
If you’re wondering what does “zero tolerance” means in this case, you can just remember that China imposes mass testing in entire cities and towns. That’s not a very comfortable way of living, and we can just hope that the recent COVID surge from the country will be gone soon enough.