Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: With the Covid-19 cases increasing at an alarming rate in China because of the highly contagious variant Omicron and its sub-variants—over 4,000 cases were reported on Sunday alone—the Asian country has imposed strict stay-at-home orders on millions more in the north-eastern provinces battling the biggest pandemic outbreak in two years.
Despite China trying to keep Covid-19 restricted since its outbreak early in 2020, the latest Omicron variants—BA.1 and BA.2—have broken through the defenses in recent weeks. All attempts to keep Covid-19 confined, using targeted lockdowns, mass testing, and travel restrictions, had only a limited impact, the media reported on Sunday.
In a fresh lockdown, about 4.5 million people have been confined to homes in Jilin, the second-biggest city in Jilin province. They will stay-at-home for three days from Monday night, officials said.
Two-thirds of the over 4,000 new infections across China were reported in Jilin province, bordering Russia and North Korea.
Since March 11, Changchun’s nine million people, also locked down, have only been allowed out once every two days to buy food.
The new measures, imposed after China recorded its first two deaths from the pandemic in over a year on Saturday last, mean only medical personnel and other anti-epidemic workers may leave their homes.
Across China, tens of millions of people are currently in lockdown in other regions. It has tremendously pressured the authorities. Officials are scrambling to create hospital beds, fearing the outbreak could put the healthcare system under severe strain.
Next to the national capital of Beijing, the city of Tangshan banned traffic for 24 hours on Sunday to slow down the spread of the virus. All its 7.7 million people will be tested afresh for the pandemic.
South Korea has also reported a fresh outbreak of cases and Israel has detected a new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the World Health Organization (WHO) said last weekend.
It cautioned that misinformation about the pandemic is creating confusion among people. Among these rumors are that Omicron is mild, the pandemic is over, and this is the last variant. All these are pieces of misinformation, WHO’s Covid-19 Technical Lead Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove said.
The WHO clarified that the Covid-19 pandemic is not over yet, that Omicron’s sub-variants like BA.1 and BA.2 are still being studied for their severity and that variants of the virus will continue to evolve.
Meanwhile, amid the Omicron strains fuelling a surge in Europe and parts of Asia again, eminent Indian virologist Dr. T. Jacob John, former ICMR chief, said the chances of the fourth Covid-19 wave in the country are low.
“There is no scientific, epidemiological reason to predict a fourth Covid-19 wave, but nobody can predict that it will not happen. I can say the probability is extremely low,” according to media reports.
About China reporting a spike in Covid-19 cases, he said, “We need not worry about what’s happening there because the contexts are extremely different. China had a zero Covid policy. They aggressively tested, quarantined, and kept the curve suppressed for a long time. Still, Omicron may become unstoppable.”