China: tight lockdown returns, despite 800 million vaccinations
China appears to be having trouble dealing with a new wave of mutated Covid-19, according to the latest news. The AP reports that residents of GuangZhou city in southern China will no longer be able to leave unless they demonstrate that it is absolutely necessary to do so, following an outbreak of COVID-19 that has made many population nuclei ill in the last days.
According to local authorities, anyone who wants permission to leave must show a negative test for the virus carried out in the previous 2 days, according to the rules issued by the city government that will take effect on Monday. The same rule applies to anyone trying to leave the surrounding Guangdong province.
The city is also limiting indoor dining, conducting mass testing and banning residents in high-risk neighborhoods from leaving their homes, just as happened in the early Wuhan stages. At least two districts in the city of 18 million people have been completely closed. And all residents who traveled through the city's Nansha, Huadu, and Conghua districts were ordered to be tested for COVID immediately. Reuters added that Nansha authorities have also ordered restaurants to stop offering food services while calling on gyms, swimming pools and other public places to temporarily cease operations.
In the meantime, a dozen metro stops across the city have also been closed.
The variant that causes the Guangzhou outbreak (the "delta" strain that was first identified in India and has since spread to the United States, Europe and Asia) is believed to be more infectious because those who they carry it slower to show symptoms as they emit more virus particles.
And although Guangzhou has not reported any deaths from the outbreak, at least officially, the city has reported four more locally transmitted cases in the 24 hours until Monday morning, bringing its recent total to more than 100 cases since May 21.
Nationally, the CCP is focusing on inoculating COVID-19 vaccines to an increasingly younger patient group. On Monday, the government revealed it had authorized the emergency use of one of China's developed vaccines, CoronaVac, for children between the ages of 3 and 17. The Coronavac vaccine is manufactured by the Beijing-based pharmaceutical company Sinovac Biotech. The study data shows that the vaccine was found to be 51% effective against symptomatic disease and 100% effective in preventing severe COVID-19 and hospitalization in adults 18 years of age and older, a coverage that, at this point does not seem sufficient.
What is worrying is more than anything else the government's reaction to a virus that is now known and that, in theory, has not claimed any victims. Are we sure that things are exactly as they say?
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The article China: the tight lockdown is back, despite 800 million vaccinations comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/cina-torna-il-lockdown-stretto-nonostante-800-milioni-di-vaccinazioni/ on Tue, 08 Jun 2021 09:52:45 +0000.