China fights several coronavirus outbreaks

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — On Monday, China banned most of the population from leaving a northeastern province affected by the coronavirus and mobilized the military reserve, at a time when the “stealth omicron” variant is causing the worst outbreak in the country since the start of the pandemic two years ago.

The National Health Commission reported 1,337 cases of local contagion in the past 24 hours, including 895 in the industrial province of Jilin. The government announced that to leave the area or to go from one city to another, a police permit will be required.

The province dispatched 7,000 reservists to help respond to the outbreak. They will have missions such as maintaining law and order, registering people at test centers and using drones to spray areas with disinfectant, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Hundreds more cases were reported in other cities and provinces, both on the coast and in inland regions. Beijing, with six new cases and Shanghai, with 41, closed residential and office buildings where sick people had been detected.

“Every day when I come to work I think that maybe that day they will order the building to close and forbid us to go home, so I always bring my sleeping bag and have food stocks in the office, just in case,” said Yimeng Li, a Shanghai resident.

While the number of cases in both China and Hong Kong is much lower than in other countries, they are the highest now since thousands of people died of COVID-19 in the city of Wuhan in early 2020. So far there are no deaths reported from the new outbreaks.

Hong Kong reported 26,908 new cases and 249 deaths in the last 24 hours on Monday. The city records cases differently from mainland China, since it combines both rapid antigen tests and PCR tests.

The governor of Hong Kong, Carrie Lam, said that for now the authorities will not increase restrictions because of the virus.

“I have to consider whether the public will accept more measures,” the governor said at a press conference.

China has had very few infections since its strict confinement in Wuhan, and the government has firmly adhered to its zero-tolerance strategy, focused on curbing coronavirus infections as soon as possible and resorting to strict lockdowns and mandatory quarantines for any contact of an infected person.

The government has indicated that for the time being it will continue to abide by its policy of curbing infections.

Authorities isolated Shenzhen on Sunday, which reported 75 cases as the population began the first of three rounds of mass testing. The city, which has 17.5 million inhabitants, is an important technological and financial center bordering Hong Kong.

Previously, on Friday of last week, authorities had isolated Changchun, a city of 9 million inhabitants in Jilin province.

Zhang Wenhong, a leading infectious disease expert at a hospital affiliated with Fudan University in Shanghai, said Monday in a trial for Chinese business outlet Caixin that the mainland figures are still in the early stages of an “exponential increase.”

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Correspondents Olivia Zhang in Beijing and Chen Si from Shanghai contributed to this note.