Shanghai – AFP
China announced, on Wednesday, that it had recorded a record level of “Covid-19” infections during the last twenty-four hours, exceeding 20,000, most of them in Shanghai, where preparations are being made to open a huge field hospital with a capacity of forty thousand beds.
And China, where the “Corona” virus was detected for the first time in the world at the end of 2019, managed until March 2021 to contain the pandemic to a large extent by using very strict measures adopted in the context of the so-called “zero Covid” strategy.
However, the mutant “Omicron” undermined this strategy, with the total daily infections exceeding the official results recorded during the first epidemic wave in Wuhan (center). The most populous country in the world announced, on Wednesday, 20,472 injuries during the last 24 hours, which is a low total relative to what is recorded by many other countries, but it is high for China, where infection levels were barely more than 100 in February.
The threshold of 10,000 daily cases was not crossed until Sunday. No new deaths were recorded, according to the Ministry of Health. The last two deaths officially announced in the country were in mid-March.
More than 80% of the new infections were recorded in Shanghai, which is the largest city in the country that has been subject to almost complete closure measures since last week.
It is expected that the authorities of the city, which has a population of 25 million people, will turn a large convention and exhibition center into a huge temporary hospital with a capacity of 40,000 beds, according to the New China News Agency. This center used to host every year the import fair organized by the Chinese authorities.
Although the majority of cases recorded in Shanghai did not show symptoms, everyone who tested positive, including children, is quarantined in centers designated for this purpose.
This strategy has been the subject of criticism on social media, as infants are separated from their parents if they are found to have “Covid-19” and their parents are not infected with the disease. At the end of the week, the authorities of Suzhou, 70 kilometers from Shanghai, announced the discovery of a mutated version of ‘omicron’ that is not yet known nationally or internationally.
