China’s government ordered the closure of all non-essential businesses and halted public transportation in Shenzhen, the finance and tech hub that’s home to 17.5 million people and many of the country’s most prominent companies, including Huawei Technologies and Apple supplier Foxconn.
In Shanghai – China’s most populous city with 24 million people – schools returned to virtual learning, neighborhoods were put on lockdown and residents were told not to leave unless absolutely necessary as mainland China faces its worst COVID-19 outbreak since the outset of the pandemic in 2020.
The most recent case numbers, driven by the omicron variant, are low compared to other countries. On Sunday, the government reported 1,938 new cases, which was triple the number it reported on Saturday but far below the daily case count of about 35,000 in the U.S., which has less than a quarter of China’s population.
The renewed lockdown efforts show that China, where the virus was first detected in 2019, hasn’t strayed from its “zero tolerance” approach to the coronavirus pandemic, and authorities renewed vows to lock down any community where one or more cases is found.
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Last week, China ordered a lockdown of the 9 million residents of Changchun, a city in the northeastern part of the Jilin province, and of the 500,000 residents of Yucheng, situated in the eastern province of Shandong. Residents were ordered to remain in their homes, unless it’s to buy food or other necessities, and will undergo three rounds of testing in the coming days and weeks.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., where the death toll approaches 1 million, states and cities continue rolling back safety measures put in place to stem the spread of the virus after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced last week that 98% of Americans live in communities where the threat of infection is so low that they can stop wearing masks.
