A COVID-hit Chinese city is offering thousands of dollars for clues in tracing the source of its latest outbreak, as part of a “people’s war” to seal one of the country’s biggest resurgents in months. Used to be.
China on Tuesday reported 43 local cases in a delta-driven surge that has spread to 20 provinces and territories, keeping the number of new cases in double digits over the past three weeks.
As more countries lift COVID measures, Beijing officials are sticking to a zero-Covid strategy that has kept infection numbers low due to strict border closures, targeted lockdowns and lengthy quarantines.
But the current outbreak has affected more than 40 cities, and officials in Hehe, a northern city on the border with Russia, said they would offer 100,000 yuan ($15,500) as a reward for the information.
“In order to uncover the source of the outbreak of this virus at the earliest and trace the chain of transmission, it is necessary to wage a mass war for prevention and control of the epidemic,” the city government said in a notice.
Officials said cases of smuggling, poaching and cross-border fishing should be reported immediately, adding that those who have bought imported goods online should be “immediately disinfected” and sent for testing.
The latest wave has seen millions under lockdown and domestic travel rules tightened, with many planes and trains cancelled.
A cluster in central Henan province has been linked to schools, as health officials urged rapid vaccination of children.
According to official figures, more than 35 lakh vaccine doses have been administered to children aged between three and 11 years.
Beijing’s harsh anti-virus stance – which has been used as political capital to bolster China’s leadership qualities – has triggered more public debate in recent weeks.
In an interview being shared on Chinese social media with Phoenix Television, virologist and University of Hong Kong professor Guan Yi called for better data to evaluate China’s vaccine efficacy.
“We shouldn’t be doing massive nucleic acid testing at every turn” to detect Covid-19 cases, or blindly taking booster jabs, he said.
Instead he urged antibody testing and timely updates by vaccine manufacturers on the effectiveness of their jabs against the variants.
There are five conditionally approved vaccines in the country, but their published efficacy rates — varying between about 50 and 82 percent — lag behind rival jabs from Pfizer-BioNtech and Moderna.
The official Xinhua news agency has hit out at critics of China’s approach, saying “strict containment measures are still the best way to save lives” and calling Beijing’s efforts “undeniable”.
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