COVID-19 cases reached their highest level in nearly two years in China on Sunday, with 1,437 cases on the mainland, according to China’s National Health Commission.

Cases have more than doubled since 10 March when 588 cases were recorded. This surge in cases, driven by the Omicron variant, has prompted the country, which has a strict zero-COVID policy, to impose fresh restrictions in provinces with a high infection rates.

It has already shutdown Jilin province which reported 895 cases on 13 March, and the mayors of Jilin city and the Jiutai district of the city of Changchun have been dismissed owing to the outbreak, according to a state-run news agency.

China has also imposed stricter restrictions on two other cities last week– Shenzhen and Shanghai. Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong and is known to be a major hub for electrical manufacturing, is under a seven-day complete lockdown. The city, which has a population of 17.5 million people, has been brought to a complete standstill with businesses suspending operations, and public transportation halting their operations. 

According to one of China’s leading infectious disease experts, Zhang Wenhong,the domestic epidemic in China is “currently in the early stage of an exponential rise”.

He wrote on China’s microblogging site, Weibo, that if China opens up quickly now, it will cause infection of a large number of people in a short period of time. “Even a low case fatality rate will cause a run on medical resources and a short-term shock in social life, causing irreparable damage to society and families,” he said. 

Hong Kong’s high death rate

In the last 24 hours, Hong Kong reported 13,332 local cases had been diagnosed with Nucleic Acid Amplification Tests (most commonly PCR tests), while 19,095 fresh cases had been detected using the rapid antigen tests.

However, Hong Kong Leader Carrie Lam told a daily briefing that there were no plans to tighten the social distancing measures owing to the limited scope offered by the current measures in place. The country has so far witnessed 263,411 cases.

Hong Kong, like China, has a zero-COVID policy. Currently, it is compulsory to wear masks everywhere, no gatherings of more than two people are allowed, and schools and public venues are closed. 

While the former British colony has been struggling to manage an influx of patients at its hospitals, Hong Kong is slowly seeing a slowdown in the daily infection rate

According to Bloomberg, Hong Kong has registered the most deaths per million people globally in the week to 10 March. Some 286 deaths were reported on Monday. This takes the death toll to 43,279.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong opened its fourth community isolation facility on 13 March with over 1,000 beds and the region has also been working with the mainland authorities to build 90,000 isolation units to accommodate patients with mild or no symptoms, reports Reuters.

Low vaccination to blame 

Lam has blamed the low vaccination rate in Hong Kong as a factor in the high rate of deaths and infections.

“We have spent over one year to promote, encourage, coerce people to take the jab. But unfortunately, the entire society partly because of the low infection rate in the last year or so and partly because of anxiety and worries and so on, we have not achieved this high rate of vaccination, especially among the elderly,” Lam said at a press conference on Monday.

According to Hong Kong’s Department of Health, 89% of those who died in the fifth wave of Covid-19 had not received any dose of vaccination. 

Wenhong said that China must start implementing more complete, smart, and sustainable coping strategies like booster shots for the elderly and improved vaccination strategies, widely available oral drugs, affordable and widely available home testing kits, effectively trained and rehearsed hierarchical diagnosis and treatment strategies, along with better home isolation process. 

Image Credits: Flickr.