China reported more than 31,600 Covid infections on Wednesday, the highest daily number since the disease began in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019, surpassing the record of 29,317 recorded in April during the Shanghai outbreak.
A health worker takes a swab from a resident on Thursday to test for Covid-19 in Jiayuguan, northwest China’s Gansu province.
Beijing: China reported a record number of daily Covid-19 infections on Thursday as it imposed regional lockdowns in many cities, including Beijing, and local authorities struggled to control the disease and the outbreak, given the promise to use Stop the “zero-Covid” controversy. “plan.
Mainland China reported more than 31,600 Covid infections on Wednesday, the highest daily number since the disease began in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019, surpassing the record of 29,317 recorded in April during the Shanghai outbreak.
The total number of cases since Nov. 1 is now more than 310,000, a rise that has left local governments across China scrambling to find ways to stop the spread. Beijing recorded more than 1,600 new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, the third day in a row of more than 1,000 cases, and one death related to the disease, raising the number to six in the ongoing outbreak.
Beijing government spokesman Xu Hejian said on Thursday, “The number of new infections continues to rise, and the disease is spreading rapidly.”
Xu said that now, “… the main epidemic of the country is many … the number of new infections in Beijing continues to rise to a high level … and prevention and controlling the administrative functions of capital is critical. period of control of epidemics.”
Several other areas in Beijing were placed under a targeted lockdown on Thursday as local authorities tried to cut off the media. Beijing has turned the exhibition center into a hospital working to house Covid-19 patients, whose numbers are expected to rise in the coming days.
The city has closed malls, restaurants and office buildings and suspended entry to many homes, especially in the worst-hit Chaoyang district, the city’s most populous city. The capitals of Guangzhou in southern China and Chongqing in the southwest of the country continued to record more than half of the country’s cases and continued to implement various restrictions within the city limits. .
Many businesses and residential areas are closed in Guangzhou and public testing continued in Chongqing from Thursday, where residents have been told not to leave the city.
Although the number of Covid-19 cases and deaths in China is still low, the largest increase in the number since the beginning of the disease is expected to slow the pace of Beijing’s “zero-Covid” policy, which caused great frustration among. citizens and dampened the economy. Meanwhile, clashes between workers and security guards at the world’s largest iPhone factory in central China’s Zhengzhou continued on Thursday, a day after the two groups clashed over sanctions. Covid-19 and the working environment.
A serious dispute between workers at the Foxconn Technology Group factory, which makes Apple iPhones and which has been shaken by Covid-19 for weeks, and security and health workers continues to disrupt the production.
Tech giant Foxconn says it will offer new hires at the world’s largest iPhone assembly plant in central Zhengzhou a chance to go home with severance pay after allegations of fraudulent contracts and poor disease control procedures the knife that caused chaos among workers, “Sixthtone said. The news site said in a report Thursday.
The number of cases of the virus is rising all over the country
China has recorded the highest number of daily Covid cases since the beginning of the disease, despite strict measures to eradicate the virus.
Several major cities, including the capital Beijing and the southern commercial hub of Guangzhou, are experiencing outbreaks.
On Wednesday, 31,527 cases were registered against April’s peak of 28,000. The number is still small for a country of 1.4 billion people and more than 5,200 have died since the disease.
This amounts to three Covid deaths per million in China, compared to 3,000 per million in the US and 2,400 per million in the UK, although direct comparisons between countries are difficult. Although China’s Covid-19 policy has clearly saved lives, it has also affected the economy and the lives of ordinary people.
The country eased some of these restrictions a few weeks ago