Residents queue to be tested for COVID-19 in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei province
China on Friday reported another 80 locally transmitted cases of COVID-19, as the country seeks to control its widespread outbreak since the original outbreak with a combination of lockdowns, mass testing and travel restrictions.
Of the new cases, 58 were found in the eastern city of Yangzhou in Jiangsu province, where the highly contagious Delta variant spread among airport workers in the provincial capital Nanjing. Other cases were found in six provinces from tropical Hainan in the south to Inner Mongolia bordering Russia.
It has taken the number of cases linked to Nanjing’s outbreak to more than 460 since the middle of last month, prompting renewed travel restrictions, community lockdowns and the sealing of Zhangjiajie, a city of 1.5 million.
Such measures have been implemented with great success after local outbreaks as part of China’s “zero tolerance” approach to the epidemic, although they are seen as taking a huge toll on society and the economy. This has led to speculation that a new approach may be needed that allows the virus to be transmitted to some manageable degree.
China says it has delivered more than 1.6 billion doses of the vaccine, although the efficacy of domestic jabs has been questioned.
According to the National Health Commission, another 44 imported cases were reported on Friday and 1,370 people are currently being treated for COVID-19, of whom 34 are in critical condition.
There have been 4,636 deaths out of 93,498 cases in China.
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