A NORTH-EASTERN Chinese city of nine million people was ordered to lock down today, as authorities scramble to halt a fresh Covid-19 outbreak that has pushed nationwide case counts to their highest in two years.

Changchun, the capital of Jilin and an important industrial base, ordered residents to work from home. The city said one person will be allowed out every two days to buy “daily necessities”, and that it will institute mass testing.

After the highly transmissible Omicron broke through China’s defences, Covid-19 cases across the country breached the 1,000 mark this week for the first time since the pandemic’s early days in 2020, from less than 100 just three weeks ago.

There are 1,369 infections across more than a dozen provinces, according to the latest daily official count released earlier today.

Shanghai also ordered its schools to close and shift to online instruction today.

Covid-19 was first detected in China in late 2019, but the government has kept it largely under control with snap lockdowns and mass testing, while keeping its borders mostly closed.

As a result, its case counts are extremely low by international standards.

But the aggressive approach has caused pandemic fatigue in China.

The country’s central economic planning agency recently warned that big lockdowns can hurt the economy, and a top Chinese scientist suggested the country should aim to co-exist with the virus, like other nations.

The government invested much of its prestige in its ability to control Covid-19, however, and today’s measures appeared to pour water on hopes that China will soon scrap its zero-tolerance approach. – AFP, March 11, 2022.