Covid-19 in China: Jilin governor confident city’s outbreak can be contained within a week

Name: China sees biggest Covid-19 surge in 2 years, steps up measures
Uploaded: 2022-03-16T00:00:18.000Z
Duration: 2 min 15 s
Description: China sees biggest Covid-19 surge in 2 years, steps up measures

Officials express confidence that China’s ‘dynamic zero-Covid’ strategy can quickly break the chain of transmissions through mass testing and quarantine

Jilin is now at the centre of China’s worst outbreak since the early days of the pandemic in Wuhan

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Workers set up beds inside a stadium to convert it into a makeshift hospital in Jilin province. Photo: Reuters

Zhuang Pinghui

Published: 8:00am, 16 Mar 2022

The governor of the northeastern Chinese province of Jilin has pledged that the outbreak in Jilin City, the epicentre of the country’s latest Covid-19 outbreak, would be contained within a week even as the number of infections topped 3,500 in a single day.

That accounted for half of the total infections reported in China on Tuesday in the largest surge the country has seen since the initial stage of the pandemic in Wuhan.

“We must take decisive and effective measures to solve the problem … resolutely fight the three major battles of full coverage of nucleic acid screening, full admission of positive patients and full centralised isolation of close contacts, and achieve zero cases in Jilin City,” Han Jun, the governor, told an epidemic control meeting on Monday night.

Han’s comments do not mean the authorities hope to totally eliminate infections within a week, but the goal is to ensure than any new infections are among people who have already been quarantined so that it does not spread any further.

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China sees biggest Covid-19 surge in 2 years, steps up measures

The strategy is in line with the “dynamic” zero-Covid approach first adopted during an outbreak in Xian, the capital of Shaanxi province, as China’s approach to the disease evolves.

Jing Junhai, Communist Party secretary of Jilin province, said the province would need to quickly convert schools and stadiums to makeshift hospitals, known as fangcang hospitals.