China’s COVID-19 curbs intensify as cases surge to highest since Shanghai lockdown

BEIJING: Chinese authorities stepped up COVID-19 lockdowns and other curbs to halt clusters from spreading as China’s case load soared to its highest since this year’s Shanghai lockdown, with Beijing and Zhengzhou seeing record daily cases.

China reported on Friday (Nov 11) 10,535 new locally transmitted cases for Nov 10, the highest since Apr 29, when the country’s commercial hub, Shanghai, was battling its most serious outbreak.

The nationwide surge, still small by global standards and for a country of 1.4 billion people, has spurred China’s top leadership to reaffirm its zero-tolerance strategy for the virus, a policy that President Xi Jinping says is to save lives, especially among China’s elderly.

The southern city of Guangzhou, the current epicentre of China’s COVID-19 fight, reported 2,824 new local cases for Nov 10, the fourth day in which infections exceeded 2,000.

Driving the infections were cases in the populous district of Haizhu, which on Friday declared a hard lockdown until Sunday after days of widening restrictions and curbs.

“All residents are required to stay at home,” the district government said in a statement. “Only one person in each household is allowed to buy daily necessities on a staggered schedule.”

All public transit in the district of 1.8 million people is also suspended, and mandatory PCR tests will be administered to “every household and every individual”, according to the statement.

China will not relax its COVID-19 measures but will keep improving them according to the changing epidemic situation and mutation of the virus, a government expert was cited as saying by the national health authority on Friday.

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