March 13, 2022

As China faces its severest domestic COVID-19 outbreaks in two years with a record 1,807 new cases reported on Sunday, the country has launched a swift response to contain the virus spread, including allowing rapid antigen tests for public use and sacking senior officials for their slack response to the ongoing health crisis.  

The latest spikes in Northeast China's Jilin, East China's Shandong, South China's Guangdong provinces, Shanghai and Beijing municipalities, which forced several major cities to go into lockdowns, saw a sharp rise in the number of asymptomatic patients. The daily increase in asymptomatic infections exceeded the daily increase in confirmed cases for six consecutive days from March 7 to 12. Meanwhile, the Omicron variant has replaced Delta to become the dominant strain, once again breaching the country's defenses by spreading from campus to community.

However, compared with the situation when the first round of COVID-19 outbreaks, initially reported in Wuhan in February 2020, swept the entire nation, Chinese society has shown greater calm and orderliness toward the latest round of health challenge.  

Read more:

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202203/1254757.shtml