Omicron: Shanghai hit by record surge in cases as China stands by zero-Covid approach to outbreaks

China reports 37,000 local infections this month driven by the Omicron variant, with experts describing mostly mild cases
Head of the expert Covid-19 panel defends China’s continuing tough approach, saying it saved the country from a sharp spike in cases

Coronavirus China

Zhuang Pinghuiin Beijing

Published: 2:04pm, 21 Mar 2022

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China’s financial hub Shanghai reported a record surge in daily local Covid-19 infections on Monday amid the country’s determined efforts to contain growing outbreaks despite the “mild symptoms” reported.

Shanghai reported 24 new domestically-transmitted Covid-19 cases with confirmed symptoms on Monday and a further 734 local asymptomatic infections, which Wu Jinglei, director of Shanghai Health Commission, attributed to rounds of mass screening in the city last week.

“Shanghai is standing the test of a severe epidemic,” Wu said, referring to the mass testing carried out from last Wednesday to Sunday.

In response to the health crisis, the Shanghai Disney Resort will close from Monday until further notice.

02:13

Shanghai fighting its worst Covid-19 outbreak since start of the pandemic

Across mainland China, 1,947 new locally transmitted cases and a further 2,384 infections without symptoms were reported on Monday, continuing the run of high infection rates. China has reported more than 37,000 local infections this month. The total for the pandemic until February was slightly more than 100,000 cases.

Liang Wannian, head of the expert panel leading China’s Covid-19 response, defended China’s tough approach to outbreaks, saying strong intervention was still needed to reinforce the “dynamic” zero-Covid target, even though it might not be possible to achieve zero cases.

“Ideally, we would achieve zero Covid-19 patients in society but the specificity of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 means we can’t achieve that for the moment,” Liang told state broadcaster China Central Television.

“The dynamic zero-Covid approach means we need to swiftly identify the outbreaks and cut the transmission chain to go towards the direction of zero Covid, or the transmission will be continuous and connected, causing a large-scale rebounding of cases.”

‘Rigid, crude’ lockdowns only choice for China’s poor regions under zero-Covid

He saw the trajectory of infections as a sign that China’s strong intervention measures were succeeding and also a reason to continue with them.

“Globally, many countries experienced a fast rise in Covid-19 cases and the momentum is a sharp, deep rise, or even the exponential as we academics call it, rather than the slow [rise],” Liang said.

“China has seen many sporadic cases, or even clusters, but the rising momentum is not exponential, which is exactly because we have taken a series of strong interventional measures to curb the momentum.”

The recent surge in cases in China – the largest since the country contained the early stage of the pandemic two years ago – is driven by the spread of the Omicron variant, which infects the upper respiratory tract more than the lungs and appears to cause milder clinical outcomes among the vaccinated population.

A change of treatment guidelines has raised expectations of changes to the strong control measures.

More than 95 per cent of Covid-19 patients in the outbreaks this month showed only mild symptoms or none at all and less than 0.1 per cent of the 29,127 cases in hospital by Friday were in a severe or critical condition.

They included the elderly, patients with comorbidities and the unvaccinated, Jiao Yahui, an official with the National Health Commission, said on Saturday.

On Saturday, China reported its first two Covid-19 deaths in more than a year, both elderly patients with comorbidities, one of whom was not vaccinated.

05:08

Shenzhen’s “slow life” Covid-19 fight an evolving pandemic strategy from mainland China?

The northern province of Jilin, which accounts for most of the cases, reported 2,091 infections, with and without symptoms, on Monday.

Zhang Li, deputy director of the provincial health commission, said 98 per cent of the cases were mild and their treatment routine.

The authority had bought 10,000 packs of Pfizer’s Paxlovid Covid-19 treatment pills, the first batch to be imported into the country, and the supplies had been distributed to various cities in the province.

In an interview with mainland magazine Caijing, Jiang Rongmeng, vice-president of Ditan Hospital, the designated Covid-19 treatment hospital in Beijing, said infections caused by Omicron were “more like a cold” because, of the more than 400 cases admitted in his hospital, none had a fever for over three days and none became severely ill.

But Liang said it was “too early to draw such a conclusion”, saying the highly transmissible Omicron would cause greater health risks than the flu.

“For some individuals the chance of becoming severe or worse drops after being infected by the Omicron variant but as a whole it spreads quickly and the absolute number of people being infected in a short period of time will be higher, meaning the absolute number of serious illnesses and deaths among the infected population will be high,” Liang said.

“This high number is a great danger to a society, a region and a country.”