New Coronavirus News from 25 Apr 2022

Here's what we know about the BA.2 Omicron subvariant now driving a new wave [National Geographic, 25 Apr 2022]

BY SANJAY MISHRA

BA.2 infections aren’t as mild as once thought and even newer versions of Omicron are circulating and spreading fast

After a brief two-month plateau, COVID-19 cases are rising again in the United States, propelled by the Omicron BA.2 subvariant and its more transmissible descendants. The uptick has experts worried, as more people are shedding their masks and returning to pre-pandemic activities.

Between April 1 and April 24, new COVID-19 cases have jumped by 75 percent, mostly due to BA.2; this subvariant now accounts for almost 75 percent of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. While hospitalizations are still at their lowest levels since the start of the pandemic, they are also trending upward nationally. And COVID-19 cases among nursing home residents and staff are rising again after falling for roughly three months.

“Ongoing transmission of BA.2 is probably related both to the increased transmissibility of the virus together with the reduction of pandemic restrictions,” says Dan Barouch, an immunologist at Harvard Medical School who directs the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “Clearly both are contributing to the current surge.”

At the same time, national vaccination rates have stalled out. Only 45.6 percent of the U.S. population has received a booster dose, and in at least 10 states, mostly in the South, more than a third of the population remains unvaccinated. This is especially troublesome because early data suggest BA.2 may cause more severe disease than the original form of Omicron.

The first Omicron wave arrived when many people in the U.S. were already vaccinated, so it seemed to cause less severe illness and got the reputation of being mild, says Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong. But “mild” was only relative to the very severe disease that previously dominant Delta variant had caused.

Melinda Maldonado, a communications strategist in Toronto, was triple vaccinated when she got a breakthrough infection in December 2021, during the peak of the Omicron wave in Canada. It left her bedridden for weeks, and three months later she still suffers with debilitating fatigue, brain fog, and cognitive disorientation.

“When people say ‘mild,’ they mean you're not dying, like you don't end up in the ICU,” Maldonado says. “For me, this was not mild.”

Now, evidence is building that the BA.2 subvariant is even more infectious than the first form of Omicron, produces more virus particles upon infection, and causes longer-lasting cases of COVID-19.

Why would BA.2 cause more severe disease?
The earlier form of Omicron, called BA.1, was more contagious than previous variants, but it caused less lung damage than Delta because it stayed mostly in the upper airways, says Guowei Wei, a mathematician and molecular biologist at Michigan State University, whose artificial intelligence model had predicted Omicron would be highly infectious. Still, the current crop of vaccines guarded against BA.1, which in most cases caused less severe disease than previous variants among the vaccinated and those who had some immunity from a previous infection.

Studies have shown that the overall risk of severe outcomes from an Omicron infection was lower than it was for Delta. But the risk of hospitalization among children younger than 10 did not significantly differ between Omicron and Delta, and Omicron infections led to a rise in hospital admissions of very young children.

Another study showed that in children, Omicron caused three times as many hospitalizations for respiratory infections compared with prior variants.

Now it seems BA.2 may be even more worrisome. In the U.K. the number of cases being recorded during the current BA.2 surge is much lower than what they saw during the Omicron wave in late December 2021—but the number of hospitalizations is almost equal.

One study that is yet to be peer reviewed suggests why BA.2 might be more severe. A team led by Kei Sato, a virologist at the University of Tokyo, created a synthetic version of BA.2 in the lab, and found that it grows faster in cells lining the nasal passage and has greater propensity to attack the lungs. This BA.2 look-alike virus also caused more severe disease in hamsters than its BA.1 counterpart.

The research suggests that mutations in BA.2’s spike protein—the part of the virus that binds to cells—enable it to dodge antibodies from a previous BA.1 infection.

Another study by Cowling and his team that has not yet been peer reviewed shows that in Hong Kong, the severity of a BA.2 infection is as bad as it was for the original SARS-CoV-2 variant for unvaccinated people of any age.

“In Hong Kong, and right now in Shanghai, I don't think [BA.2] is as mild as maybe people thought,” says Cowling.

Do vaccines still work for BA.2?
Available data show that the currently approved vaccines will prevent severe infection and hospitalization from COVID-19, more so in cases of BA.2 than BA.1.

Both Denmark and South Africa currently have high levels of immunity in their populations stemming from vaccination and infection, respectively. But data from both countries has shown there’s not much difference in severity between BA.2 and BA.1 infections. Reinfection with different subtypes of Omicron is possible, although in highly vaccinated Denmark, it was rare and mainly affected younger unvaccinated individuals.

Booster doses are also showing a lot of promise at protecting people from all forms of Omicron.

Various studies have shown that a third dose of a vaccine, or a breakthrough infection, can rekindle the immunity system’s memory to produce antibodies that work well against all variants, including Omicron. Harvard’s Barouch led a study showing that a third dose of the vaccine is a must for producing sufficient antibody levels against BA.2, just as is required for full protection against BA.1.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now recommends a fourth dose of vaccine for people age 50 and older, four months after the third dose; and additional dose for those with compromised immune systems, such as cancer patients. In a study not yet peer reviewed, a fourth dose substantially reduced breakthrough infection among healthcare workers with high exposure risk, even at the peak of the first Omicron wave. In addition, booster doses substantially reduce a person’s chances of transmitting the virus.

By contrast, the Hong Kong study revealed that the outcomes can be severe among unvaccinated people infected with any of the Omicron variants, including BA.2.

More variants on the horizon
As SARS-CoV-2 continues to spread and mutate globally, facilitated by pandemic fatigue, recombinants of variants keep forming; the recently discovered XE subvariant is a hybrid of BA.1 and BA.2 that is starting to spread; XE cases are relatively rare but have grown high enough that the U.K. Health Security Agency estimates it’s about 10 percent more contagious than BA.2.

Meanwhile, a new BA.2 descendent called BA.2.12.1 is spreading even more rapidly, causing 20 percent of all cases in the U.S. within a month of its discovery in early March. Earlier estimates show that BA.2.12.1 spreads faster than earlier strains and could be better at dodging the immune system’s antibodies.

“There are actually many new versions of Omicron, not just two. And in some cases, they do appear to be outcompeting even BA.2,” says Harvard’s Barouch.

This all means the U.S. “needs to recharge its vaccination program” to avoid a likely surge in the fall and winter, says Saad Omer, an epidemiologist who directs the Yale Institute for Global Health in Connecticut.

In addition to vaccines, masks have been shown to be effective in limiting the risk of COVID-19, both by reducing the spread of viral materials from an infected person and by reducing the chances of getting an infection. And avoiding an infection really should be the goal, experts stress: The aftereffects of COVID-19, including the array of symptoms collectively known as long COVID, can be debilitating.

“I thought if I got COVID, it would be the sniffles because that's the predominant narrative,” says Maldonado. “I want people to consider the risk when they think about things opening and not using a mask, because you don't know if it could be you.”

An uptick in COVID cases left Beijing scrambling to avoid a Shanghai-style lockdown [Fortune, 25 Apr 2022]

BY NICHOLAS GORDON

Panicked shoppers stripped supermarket shelves bare in Beijing after local health authorities ordered 3.5 million people in the city's largest district to undergo three rounds of mandatory COVID tests this week.

“The situation is grim”, a member of Beijing’s municipal party committee said on Sunday, saying the whole city needed to “act immediately” to prevent a surge in cases. Local officials have placed several buildings on lockdown and have suspended some in-person social activities to prevent the virus spreading. But Beijing health authorities believe the virus may have been “spreading invisibly” for a week.

Beijing authorities reported 19 new COVID cases on Monday morning, with almost 60 cases recorded since Friday. Reported cases have been traced mostly to Beijing's Chaoyang district, home to the capital's central business district as well as several of the city's foreign embassies.
Although Beijing's daily case number is low compared to infection levels in other major world cities, the capital is desperate to prevent its minor COVID spike from spiralling into an uncontrollable crisis, like the COVID outbreak currently gripping Shanghai.

Some Beijing residents, perhaps mindful of how a compulsory testing order in Shanghai evolved into an indefinite period of citywide lockdown that has left Shanghaiers desperate for food, are preparing for a prolonged lockdown in the capital. Shoppers are stockpiling food and other household supplies even as local officials pledge to ensure adequate supplies in order to avoid the food shortages seen during Shanghai’s lockdown.

Shanghai's lockdown tightens

A COVID outbreak in Beijing would further strain China’s COVID zero policy, which uses mass testing and lockdowns to completely suppress outbreaks when they emerge. While the policy has successfully controlled earlier outbreaks, it has not been able to control Shanghai's current outbreak of the Omicron variant.

Shanghai, a city of 26 million, is now in its fourth week of lockdown—though some parts of the city have been isolated for far longer. On Monday the financial hub reported almost 19,500 new COVID cases as well as 51 COVID deaths, marking a record high COVID fatality rate for the city.

Facing mounting COVID cases, Shanghai officials vowed to strengthen their COVID quarantine measures on Thursday evening. Soon after, social media posts showed authorities in several districts had erected wire fences around entrances to buildings with confirmed COVID cases, caging locked-down residents inside.

Public frustration is building over Shanghai's lockdown. A video clip compiling audio snippets from Shanghai's lockdown, including recordings of people pleading with local authorities to provide food and medical treatment, went viral on Chinese social media over the weekend, leading to a cat-and-mouse game between social media users sharing the video and China's internet censors attempting to block it.

Shanghai's COVID outbreak has roiled global supply chains too. The city is home to the world's largest port but COVID control measures have forced factories to close and prevented truckers from travelling across the city, leading to a severe backlog of container ships waiting to dock and unload their cargo.

Authorities have permitted some factories to reopen under a "closed-loop system", where workers live on-site and where entry is tightly controlled, but operations remain unstable. On Monday, the South China Morning Post reported that two factories owned by iPhone supplier Foxconn in Kunshan, a city that borders Shanghai, have been closed since Wednesday due to reported COVID cases among its staff.

COVID zero continues
Despite growing evidence of the economic and social costs of maintaining a COVID-zero policy, President Xi Jinping has called for the country to continue its zero-tolerance approach to managing COVID, leaving little room for his political underlings to waver.

Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, who is overseeing Shanghai's COVID response, said Sunday that the city would need to take “the strongest measures” to fight the outbreak, arguing that a prolonged coronavirus outbreak—ignoring that the current outbreak has lasted over a month—will only "cost more social resources.”

Beijing races to contain 'urgent and grim' Covid outbreak as Shanghai lockdown continues [CNN, 25 Apr 2022]

By Simone McCarthy

Hong Kong (CNN)Beijing is racing to track a Covid-19 outbreak that may have been spreading in the capital for a week, city authorities said over the weekend, raising the prospect more stringent restrictions could soon be implemented in line with other Chinese cities.

Chaoyang, one of the city's largest districts, announced Sunday that it would launch three rounds of mass testing of those who work and live in the district, some 3.5 million residents, according to the latest census.

The announcement came after 11 cases were detected in a 24-hour period, sparking panic buying in the district, which includes the business center and a number of foreign embassies, as residents rushed to stock up on basic goods in case of a lockdown, despite authorities' assurances there were ample supplies.

Beijing officials said over the weekend they were tracking cases across multiple districts and involving students, tour groups, and interior decoration workers. The capital recorded 19 new local cases on Sunday, bringing the total in the city since April 22 to 60, according to national health data released Monday morning.

"The city has recently seen several outbreaks involving multiple transmission chains, and the risk of continued and undetected transmission is high. The situation is urgent and grim," municipal official Tian Wei told reporters Saturday. "The whole city must act immediately."

The pressure to contain the outbreak in the capital comes as cases continue to grow in Shanghai, despite a failed weeks-long lockdown that has brought the financial hub to a halt. The city reported more than 19,000 new cases and 51 deaths on Sunday, according to official figures released Monday morning.

The daily death count marks a record high since city officials first reported fatalities in the city's ongoing outbreak last Monday, though questions have been raised about whether the numbers account for all fatalities.

In Beijing, authorities mobilized to curb transmission, placing several residential communities in Chaoyang under "control management," according to state media, using a term that typically means residents are barred from leaving the area while they undergo testing. A district official on Sunday warned that disruptions to business and work were inevitable in the course of fighting the outbreak.

Screening would be upped in tour groups in the city, after cases were detected among a group of mainly elderly tourists who were now under quarantine, officials said on Saturday. At least one village in a suburban district of Beijing linked to a positive case was also closed down as mass testing was carried out.

The rush to contain the outbreak comes as fears grow across China that more stringent measures could be in store as the country sticks with a stringent "zero-Covid" policy to eliminate the spread of the virus in each outbreak.

That policy has faced its most stark challenge since March 1 as the highly transmissible Omicron variant sparked several simultaneous outbreaks. Case counts have ballooned to unprecedented levels in China, driven by large outbreaks in northeastern Jilin province and Shanghai.

Lockdowns and enforced quarantines in Shanghai have sparked anger and desperation among citizens, who have struggled to access to food and medical care. The city had earlier said it was not going to implement a full, citywide lockdown, leaving many unprepared when officials rapidly changed course late last month.

Restrictions have also spilled over into other areas with several dozen cities rolling out some form of lockdown restrictions, according to a count earlier this month.

New Coronavirus News from 24 Apr 2022

COVID-19: Germany, France, South Korea report highest cases globally; check full list here [Free Press Journal, 24 Apr 2022]

The US continues to be the worst-hit country with the world's highest number of cases and deaths at 80,971,925 and 991,231, respectively, according to the CSSE.

The global coronavirus caseload has topped 509.1 million, while the deaths have surged to more than 6.21 million and vaccinations to over 11.23 billion, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

In its latest update on Sunday morning, the University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed that the current global caseload and the death toll stood at 509,166,036 and 6,216,725, respectively, while the total number of vaccine doses administered increased to 11,233,194,944.

Meanwhile, according to COVID-19 tracker Worldometer, there are several countries that are still reporting a huge amount of cases. Germany, France, South Korea and Italy have reported the maximum cases on Saturday, April 24.

Check out the list below:
Germany - 89,665
France - 80,571
South Korea - 75,414
Italy - 70,520
Japan - 42,808
Australia - 41,754

Check the full list here.

The US continues to be the worst-hit country with the world's highest number of cases and deaths at 80,971,925 and 991,231, respectively, according to the CSSE.

India accounts for the second highest caseload at 43,052,425.

The other countries with over 10 million cases are Brazil (30,345,808) France (28,435,100), Germany (24,180,512), the UK (22,106,306), Russia (17,864,332), South Korea (16,895,194), Italy (16,079,209), Turkey (15,016,210), Spain (11,736,893) and Vietnam (10,554,689).

The nations with a death toll of over 100,000 are Brazil (662,855), India (522,116), Russia (367,203), Mexico (324,033), Peru (212,724), the UK (173,985), Italy (162,609), Indonesia (156,040), France (146,057), Iran (140,952), Colombia (139,771), Germany (134,179), Argentina (128,344), Poland (115,948), Spain (103,721) and South Africa (100,298).

China Covid death toll rises as Beijing warns of 'grim' situation [FRANCE 24 English, 24 Apr 2022]

Shanghai (AFP) – Shanghai reported 39 Covid deaths Sunday, official data showed, its highest daily toll since a weeks-long lockdown started, while China's capital Beijing warned of a "grim" situation with rising infections.

The world's second-largest economy has been struggling to stamp out its worst Covid-19 outbreak in two years with a playbook of harsh lockdowns and mass testing as it sticks to a strict zero-Covid policy, taking a heavy toll on businesses and public morale.

The cosmopolitan business hub of Shanghai has been almost entirely locked down since the start of the month, snarling supply chains, with many residents confined to their homes for even longer as it became the epicentre of the outbreak.

China's biggest city only announced its first fatalities on April 18, despite reporting thousands of cases each day in recent weeks.

It reported 39 more deaths on Sunday, National Health Commission data showed, bringing its total toll to 87, while the country logged nearly 22,000 new local virus cases.

Shanghai's previous highest daily toll since lockdown was 12, reported a day earlier.

The city of 25 million has struggled to provide fresh food to those confined at home, while patients have reported trouble accessing regular medical care as thousands of health staff were deployed for Covid testing and treatment.

Censors have battled to scrub the online backlash against the prolonged lockdown.
Meanwhile 22 new infections were reported in the capital Beijing, after warnings from an official on Saturday that the city must take urgent action.

Health official Pang Xinghuo said preliminary observations suggested Covid had been "spreading invisibly" within the capital for a week now, affecting "schools, tour groups and many families".

"The risk of continued and hidden transmission is high, and the situation is grim," Tian Wei of Beijing's Municipal Party Committee told a press briefing.

"The whole city of Beijing must act immediately."

North Korea: COVAX scraps the reclusive country's vaccine allocations [The Washington Post, 24 Apr 2022]

By Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Min Joo Kim

SEOUL — As mask mandates and social distancing requirements lift around the world, North Korea remains one of two countries that have not administered any coronavirus vaccines, with no sign of how it can ever begin to reopen despite a brewing humanitarian crisis for its people.

The vaccines that were allocated for North Korea through a United Nations-backed global vaccination effort are no longer available, officials said this month, after Pyongyang repeatedly rejected the initiative’s offers of millions of doses.

North Korea, already one of the most closed societies in the world, remains in a strict pandemic lockdown and has shuttered its borders except to a minimal level of trade with China, with grave implications for the health and food security of its population.

The pandemic closure has exacerbated the food crisis, said Tomás Ojea Quintana, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on North Korean human rights. In a recent report, Quintana said the country’s “covid restrictions, including border closures, appear to have prevented an outbreak inside the country, though likely at considerable cost to the wider health situation and further exacerbating economic deprivation.”

No one is clear on the exact situation inside the country, however, because North Korea’s retreat inward in the pandemic has restricted remaining channels of information — with diplomats, humanitarian aid groups and tourists no longer able to enter.

In light of the impending crisis, Quintana urged the international community to find some way to get the needed 60 million doses into the country to immunize its population of 25 million.

Last year, North Korea rejected nearly 3 million doses of China’s Sinovac vaccine, saying shipments should go to other countries that need them more. North Korea also rejected 2 million doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford University vaccine out of apparent concerns about potential side effects.

North Korean officials have privately indicated that they would prefer mRNA vaccines, such as Pfizer or Moderna, according to a report by a panel of experts convened by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. The panel concluded that North Korea probably would be interested in a high-volume offer of an mRNA vaccine.

With no vaccines at all, North Korea risks becoming the epicenter of new variants as a result of the population’s low immunity to the virus, the panel found.

“It is inevitable that they will have to reopen the border, and when they do, the best way to protect their population — which is what they’re already interested in — is to vaccinate the population as much as possible, which they are capable of doing,” said Kee Park, a global health expert at Harvard Medical School who has worked on health-care projects in North Korea.

“They have to take a different strategy at this point. Zero covid strategy is starting to crumble,” Park said.

Officials at the North Korean Mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment on whether the country intends to accept vaccines or what it hopes to see before moving forward on an immunization program.

North Korea and Eritrea are now the only two countries in the world that have not administered vaccines.

The Gavi Alliance, part of the Covax initiative that aims to deliver vaccines to the world’s most vulnerable people, said this month that it no longer has vaccine doses allocated for North Korea but that they could be made available again if the country changes its mind and starts an immunization program and meets technical requirements.

North Korea had completed some of the requirements for accepting Covax deliveries, but there were ongoing negotiations on whether North Korea is willing to indemnify the vaccine manufacturer against unexpected side effects.

Two years since North Korea’s declaration of a “national emergency response” to the coronavirus, the lockdown shows no signs of letting up, with state media this week urging the public to “strengthen the anti-epidemic work in preparation for the prolonged emergency.” A piece published in the state newspaper Rodong Sinmun warned against “sloppiness and idleness” in anti-epidemic work.

Still, at the year-end party plenum in December, North Korea announced it will shift from a “control-based anti-epidemic work” to an “advanced and people-oriented” measure that seeks to “strengthen the anti-epidemic stronghold while overcoming circumstances that ignore convenience for our people,” according to state media.

“Such a change in the basis of their anti-virus approach is a confession that there are limitations to fundamentally solving the problem with control and restriction alone, and that the long-term restrictions caused fatigue and discontent among the people,” said Kim Ho-hong, a researcher at Seoul-based Institute for National Security Strategy, in a report.

Ahn Kyung-su of the Seoul-based research center dprkhealth.org said Pyongyang’s “people-oriented” slogan was probably an effort to alleviate pandemic fatigue, and he noted that the restrictions remain in place partly because of the virus resurgence in China, which is being closely tracked in state media.

“North Korea showed signs of reopening earlier this year in January, when trains briefly ran across the Chinese border, but the virus spike in mainland China led North Korea back into a strict isolation,” he said.

Anti-viral drugs could be a potential route for North Korea to reopen without needing to accept outside monitoring of its technical capabilities, the CSIS panel suggested. While the mRNA vaccine requires a sophisticated cold-chain and other logistics, anti-viral pills can be distributed more easily.

In light of what could possibly be an unfolding humanitarian crisis, the international community needs to find some way to persuade Pyongyang to reopen, U.N. special rapporteur Quintana asserted.

“A new way of thinking needs to take hold. This will require vision and initiative, driven by the needs of the North Korean people rather than any other agenda,” he said in his report.

Shanghai authorities fence off COVID-hit areas, sparking outrage [Al Jazeera English, 25 Apr 2022]

China’s most populous city, Shanghai, is battling the country’s biggest COVID-19 outbreak.
Shanghai authorities have erected fences outside residential buildings in the city to contain a COVID-19 outbreak, sparking renewed outrage over a lockdown that has forced many of the Chinese city’s 25 million residents to remain indoors.

China’s most populous city and most important economic hub is battling the country’s biggest COVID-19 outbreak by closing off areas of the city and forcing all those who test positive into quarantine centres.

The lockdown in Shanghai, which for many residents has lasted more than three weeks, has fuelled frustration among the public over lost wages, family separations, poor conditions in quarantine, and lack of access to medical care and food.

China reported 21,796 new community-transmitted COVID-19 infections on Sunday, with the vast majority being asymptomatic cases in Shanghai. Across the country, many cities and provinces have enforced some version of a lockdown in an attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

The latest outbreak in Shanghai, driven by the highly contagious Omicron variant, has seen hundreds of thousands of cases detected in the city but fewer than 100 deaths since the outbreak began nearly two months ago.

On social media, images of government workers wearing hazmat suits have gone viral as they sealed off entrances to housing blocks in the city and closed off entire streets with green fencing, prompting questions and complaints from residents.

“This is so disrespectful of the rights of the people inside, using metal barriers to enclose them like domestic animals,” a user of the social media platform Weibo said.

One video showed residents shouting from balconies at workers who tried to set up fencing before relenting and taking the barricade away. Other videos showed people trying to pull the fences down.

“Isn’t this a fire hazard?” asked another Weibo user of the policy to fence people into homes.
Many of the fences have been erected around locations designated as “sealed areas”, which are residential buildings where at least one person has tested positive for COVID-19, meaning those inside are forbidden from leaving their front doors.

A notice on Saturday, reportedly from a local authority and shared online, said “hard quarantine” was being imposed in some areas.

The Shanghai government did not respond to a request for comment.

Beijing braces for rise in Covid cases amid outcry over Shanghai blockade [The Guardian, 24 Apr 2022]

by Vincent Ni

Official says Covid ‘spreading invisibly’ within capital as Shanghai residents complain about barriers at residential buildings

Authorities in Beijing are on high alert for a surge in coronavirus cases amid a fresh outcry in Shanghai over buildings blockaded under China’s zero Covid policy.

The number of new cases in the capital rose by 22 on Sunday – all locally transmitted – compared with six the day before, according to official reports. Beijing authorities have so far not taken steps to lock down the capital, but they have ordered a number of gyms and after-school activity providers to suspend in-person classes.

Residents rushed to stockpile food amid rumours of tougher measures in the coming days. Inhabitants of Chaoyang district – the city’s largest area with 3.45 million people – will also have to undergo three coronavirus tests this coming week.

Food hoarding is somewhat underway in #beijing, these pics are shared in my Wechat moments. Slim pickings for fresh veggies at my neighborhood Walmart as well. Of course gov't is assuring the public today theres a healthy supply of necessities https://t.co/wrktetdaWY pic.twitter.com/VzoRbl5m3E— Yang Liu (@yangliuxh) April 24, 2022

Health official Pang Xinghuo said preliminary observations suggested Covid had been “spreading invisibly” within the capital for a week, affecting “schools, tour groups and many families”.

“The risk of continued and hidden transmission is high, and the situation is grim,” Tian Wei of Beijing’s municipal party committee told a press briefing. “The whole city of Beijing must act immediately.”

The outbreak in Beijing came as Mainland China’s most crucial financial hub, Shanghai, enters its fourth week of city-wide lockdown. Thirty-nine new deaths were reported on Sunday, compared with 12 the previous day and by far the most during the current outbreak.
‘Hard isolation’

As the situation did not seem to have improved following three weeks of stringent lockdown in Shanghai, desperate officials erected mesh barriers outside some residential buildings on Saturday. This move – described in the official directive “hard isolation” – sparked a fresh public outcry over a lockdown that has forced many of the city’s 25 million people to stay home.

Images of white hazmat suit-clad workers sealing entrances of housing blocks and even closing off entire streets with 2-metre-tall green fencing went viral on social media on Saturday, prompting questions and complaints from residents.

“Isn’t this a fire hazard?” said one user on the social media platform Weibo. “This is so disrespectful of the rights of the people inside, using metal barriers to enclose them like domestic animals,” said another.

Most of the barriers appeared to have been erected around compounds designated as “sealed areas”, which are buildings where at least one person has tested positive for Covid and so its residents are forbidden from leaving their front doors.

The move from the local government, as some Shanghai residents pointed out, appeared to have contradicted an earlier advisory from China’s top legislative body that was issued during the first round of Covid outbreak in March 2020.

In that advisory, as was reported by state news agency, Xinhua, a spokesperson at the Legislative Affairs Commission of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress said that measures to enforce “hard isolation” were “illegal” and “unreasonable”.

The Shanghai government did not respond to a request for comment.

Shanghai Covid Stories: Barriers are being installed all over the city. Meanwhile their purpose hasn't been fully explained.

A thread. pic.twitter.com/Vhnojz2cOR
— chris pc (@chris__pc) April 24, 2022

Fast, precise, too tough? Lockdowns risk stalling China’s economy
Read more

In the past three weeks, the lockdown in Shanghai has fuelled frustration over difficulties accessing food and medical care as well as over lost wages, family separation, conditions at quarantine centres and censorship of efforts to vent online.

It has also exacted a toll on the world’s second-largest economy, with factory efforts to resume production disrupted by snarled supply chains and difficulties faced by locked-down residents returning to work.

Authorities did not report any deaths from Covid during the first few weeks of its latest case surge, fuelling doubt among residents about the figures. It has since reported 87 fatalities from the virus, all in the past seven days.

New case numbers fell slightly for Saturday, but remained in the tens of thousands. Shanghai recorded 19,657 new local asymptomatic cases, down from 20,634 a day earlier, and 1,401 symptomatic cases, down from 2,736.

Nationwide, China reported 20,285 new asymptomatic coronavirus cases for Saturday, down from 21,423 a day earlier, with 1,580 symptomatic cases, down from 2,988.