37 Mln Chinese People Are in COVID-19 Lockdown

 Tens of millions of people are living under lockdown in China, as the country battles its worst Covid-19 outbreak since the early days of the pandemic.

This outbreak has spread far faster than previous waves of less infectious variants, with daily cases skyrocketing from a few dozen in February to more than 5,100 on Tuesday — the highest figure since the early 2020 outbreak in Wuhan.

The number may sound low compared to other countries, but it is alarmingly high for a nation that has attempted to stamp out outbreaks and chains of transmission with a strict zero-Covid policy throughout the pandemic.

As of Tuesday, cases have been reported in 21 provinces and municipalities nationwide, including the national capital Beijing, and other major cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen.

The cases may still be in their thousands, but as of Tuesday 37 million people were in lockdown.

Here’s what we know about China’s outbreak.

How did this wave begin?

Cases began rising at the start of the month in a few provinces around the country, including Shandong in the east, Guangdong in the south, and Jilin in the northeast.

By March 6, experts were cautioning the situation was “severe” in some places — but they expressed confidence that “China still has the ability to control it,” state-run tabloid Global Times reported at the time.

Jilin province, which shares a border with North Korea, soon became a major hotspot with a university cluster that prompted public outrage online after quarantined students complained of poor conditions while isolating on campus.

More than 4,000 of Tuesday’s reported infections were reported in Jilin. Nearly half of the total infections in this outbreak have come from that province — and cases there haven’t peaked yet, officials warned on Tuesday.

Authorities and state media say it’s still not clear how the first few outbreaks began.

But several factors — including cases imported from overseas and the prevalence of the Omicron variant — exacerbated the severity of the outbreak nationwide, said Global Times, citing Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.