‘Citizen warning’ issued due to worst outbreak since Wuhan

Since Covid-19 first emerged in Wuhan in 2019, there are more provinces fighting the disease than ever before. The highly-infectious delta variant continues to spread across the country despite the increasingly aggressive measures that local officials have taken to stop it. In the world’s second-largest economy, infections have been detected in 19 of 31 provinces. There were 93 new local cases reported in China on Wednesday, and 11 asymptomatic infections.

‘Covid Zero’   
In addition to Chongqing, cases were detected in Henan and Jiangsu on the east coast. Chinese officials say they are committed to keeping a Covid Zero approach even as outbreaks come faster, spread further and evade many of the controls previously in place. Due to the severe responses needed to eradicate the delta variant, several countries with zero-tolerance approaches, including Singapore and Australia, have switched their focus and instead rely on high vaccination rates to live with the virus as an endemic.

Beijing reports new cases
As of Wednesday, Beijing reported nine infections, including one that was previously reported as asymptomatic. Currently, 38 cases have been reported in the city, the most since a pre-delta outbreak last January and February. Two schools were quarantined after a teacher was found to be infected. Several other schools were closed since their employees may have been present at the vaccination site where the infected teacher recently received a booster shot.

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Chinese urge stockpiling  
While the country adopts increasingly strict measures to contain its latest outbreak of the Covid virus, the government has urged citizens to stock up on daily necessities and for authorities to take steps to ensure adequate food supplies. On the website of the Ministry of Commerce late on Monday, a notice urged families to store a certain amount of daily necessities as needed for daily life and emergency situations. In the directive, it does not mention a food shortage or whether the instructions were motivated by concerns that Covid measures could disrupt supply chains or leave citizens in need of food during a lockdown.