Despite "Zero Covid" Policy, Cases Rapidly Rise Across Chinese Cities

The Covid cases in China's many provinces and cities including Heilongjiang have been rising despite Beijing's claim of "Zero COVID-19 Policy" in the country.

According to media reports, the COVID-19 outbreak in Beijing, Heilongjiang and several other cities is still not under control, while the infection cases in nine cities - Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Yunfu, Huizhou, Heyuan, Meizhou, Baise, Nanning and Shaoyang -- and inside three southern provinces of China -- Guangdong, Guangxi and Hunan -- is growing at a rapid rate.

This highlights the risk of another outbreak of the pandemic due to the huge mobility of the people during China's Spring festival.

Wang Guangfa, a respiratory expert at Peking University First Hospital, had told the Global Times that this year's Spring Festival travel rush comes amid sporadic outbreaks, similar to last year.

The huge flow of passengers would certainly increase the risk of COVID-19 spreading. Affected by the domestic COVID-19 flare-ups, many people couldn't manage to get back home and decided to stay put.

Furthermore, Xixia county authorities had decided to impose strict control, particularly over people returning from medium and high-risk areas like Shenzhen and Baise city.

The office of the COVID-19 prevention and control headquarters, Xixia county recently directed various command and Control Dept in villages. towns and streets, as well as, members units of various COVID-19 prevention and control in Xixia county, as per media reports.

While Nanyang city, Henan province will impose stringent checking of people returning from Covid-19 hotspots including maintenance of records of their interactions, strict implementation of measures like checking RT-PCR reports and sending special reports to the COVID-19 headquarters on the prevention and control situation in the region.

Meanwhile, China reported 40 locally transmitted COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, the National Health Commission said on Friday.

According to Xinhua News Agency out of the new local infections, 22 were reported in Inner Mongolia, nine in Liaoning, four each in Jiangsu and Guangdong, and one in Yunnan.

Thursday also saw eight provincial-level regions reporting 47 imported COVID-19 cases, as per the Commission.

Six new suspected cases arriving from outside the mainland were reported in Shanghai, and no new deaths from COVID-19 were reported on the day, it added, reported the news agency.