402. This is the number of new cases of Covid-19 reported by China on Thursday, almost double the previous day. These contaminations remain disproportionate to the balance sheets in the rest of the world, but they are for China at their highest level since March 2020.
The majority of new cases Thursday were recorded in the province of Jilin (northeast) bordering North Korea, as well as in the port city of Qingdao (east), which overlooks the Yellow Sea. Despite the resurgence of the epidemic, local authorities seemed to adopt a more moderate health approach. The eponymous capital of Jilin has thus not decreed confinement but simply ordered its inhabitants to avoid any unnecessary travel. In Qingdao, only residents of areas where cases of Omicron have been detected are currently being screened.
A zero Covid policy
China, where the coronavirus was initially detected at the end of 2019, observes a zero Covid policy, which helped to quickly stem the epidemic, but comes with a high social and economic cost. As soon as a case appears, the authorities generally impose strict containment measures on a large scale and carry out massive and repeated screening of the population.
This approach, however, raises questions about the viability of such a strategy. In his annual address to parliament, Premier Li Keqiang said on Saturday that China should “constantly optimize” its measures against the epidemic.
In October 2020, the metropolis had tested all of its 10 million inhabitants, after the appearance of a few cases. More recently, the authorities had imposed in December a strict confinement to the 13 million in Xi’an (north). This month-long lockdown had been the longest and most extensive imposed in China since the quarantine of Wuhan (center), the first epicenter of the pandemic, from January to April 2020.