The focus in the world's most populous country is on the southern port city of Guangzhou. In eight days they have added just over thirty new local infections. A figure that would be laughable in other countries. Even celebratory. But that 23 cases were reported on Monday and on Tuesday 11, from the point of view of the Chinese authorities and their approach to Covid Zero, there are too many in a city of more than 15 million inhabitants, double that of New York, which had been used to a life with almost no masks on the streets.
China has activated "war mode" in Guangzhou. It is the expression that the Government uses to say that they are going to cut community transmission as they have been doing since the first outbreak in Wuhan: closures, confinements and massive tests. After all, seeing the mirror of the new chaos due to the spike in infections in Southeast Asia, Beijing does not want scares in its southern provinces.
Read more: The corona outbreak in Wuhan
New restrictions in Guangzhou, a major avant-garde hub in Guangzhou province with 115 million residents, came into effect Monday night. Anyone who wants to leave the city must show a negative CRP within 72 hours before traveling. 519 flights have been canceled in a province that has received the most visitors since the beginning of the pandemic, in addition to the fact that, according to official figures, it represents 90% of the country's incoming international arrivals every day. Last year, Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport was the busiest in the world, handling 43.77 million trips.
Another important measure by the authorities has been to close five streets in the Liwan district, ordering their neighbors to quarantine themselves in their homes, allowing only one person per household to go out to buy basic daily necessities. In that area, where half of the 11 new positives were reported this Tuesday, entertainment venues have been closed, schools return to online classes like a year ago and restaurants only remain open if they can send meals to home.
INDIAN VARIANT
The Chinese authorities attributed these new cases to the variant of COVID B1617, first detected in India and recently christened by the WHO as the Delta variant. "In this race against the virus, we must get a little ahead and run faster than before to block the spread and cut the infection chain in time," Huang Guanglie, director of the Guangzhou municipal health commission, said on Monday.
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The local government has canceled the vaccination campaign to concentrate all its efforts on carrying out massive nucleic acid tests: more than six million samples had already been collected by noon on Tuesday. From Beijing, a hundred epidemiologists and virologists have been sent to Guangzhou to trace the origin of the new outbreak.
Read more: The devastation from Corona in India
After three weeks without local infections, on May 13, the first ones were reported in the eastern province of Anhui. In just a week, after closing and testing the cities where the cases had appeared for coronavirus, the outbreak was over.
China is a country that has had its borders closed since March 28, 2020. In total, according to official figures, it has reported 91,122 infections and 4,636 deaths. He managed to control the number of community infections by quickly isolating imported cases under a strict 21-day quarantine procedure in a hotel room.
Read also: The vaccine will play a key role in normalizing the post-epidemic world
The closures of cities of millions of inhabitants due to a dozen infections, strict confinements and massive PCR, accompanied by citizen responsibility since the entire country has never been completely confined, were enough for the authorities to control the pandemic just four months after the Wuhan's first outbreak.
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