China wrestles worst virus outbreak in two years

BEIJING: China placed all 17 million residents in one of its biggest cities under lockdown on Sunday, as virus cases doubled nationwide to nearly 3,400 and anxiety mounted over the resilience of its “zero-COVID” approach in the face of the worst outbreak in two years.

The southern tech hub of Shenzhen told all residents to stay at home as it struggles to eradicate an omicron flare-up linked to the neighboring virus-ravaged city of Hong Kong.

The lockdown and a suspension of public transport will last until March 20, a city government notice said, adding that it would launch three rounds of mass testing.

The move extends an earlier lockdown imposed on the city’s central business district.

“If prevention and control is not strengthened in a timely and decisive manner, it could easily become large-scale community transmission,” Shenzhen health official Lin Hancheng said at a Sunday briefing.

The surge in infections across China has also prompted authorities to close schools in Shanghai and lock down multiple northeastern cities, as 18 provinces battle clusters of the omicron and Delta variants.

China, where the virus was first detected in late 2019, has maintained a strict zero-COVID policy enforced with swift lockdowns, travel restrictions and mass testing when clusters have emerged.

But the latest flare-up, driven by the highly transmissible omicron variant and a spike in asymptomatic cases, is testing the efficacy of that approach.

Shanghai has so far been spared a citywide order to stay at home, but individual housing compounds were being locked down as the megacity ramped up efforts to contain infections and test suspected close contacts.

Jilin — the city at the center of the outbreak in the northeast — was partially locked down Saturday, while residents of Yanji, an urban area of nearly 700,000 bordering North Korea, were also confined to their homes Sunday.

Zhang Yan, a Jilin health commission official, said the response from local authorities had been lacking.

“There is insufficient understanding of the characteristics of the omicron variant ... and judgment has been inaccurate,” he said at a Sunday press briefing.

The neighboring city of Changchun — an industrial base of 9 million people — was locked down Friday, while at least three other small cities have been locked down since March 1.

The mayor of Jilin and the head of the Changchun health commission were dismissed from their jobs Saturday, state media reported, in a sign of the pressure placed on local authorities to contain virus clusters.