China to continue Covid curbs amid overseas outbreaks: Top health official

‘At present, the novel coronavirus’s spread around the globe, and especially in China’s neighbouring countries, is unstable and rampant, and the domestic epidemic situation remains complicated and severe this winter and spring,’ said Wu Liangyou, deputy director of the national health commission’s (NHC).

‘We will continue to enforce strict virus control measures, solidifying the defence against imported cases and local flare-ups, and consolidate our hard-won outcomes in stemming the virus,’ China Daily newspaper reported, quoting the top health official.

It effectively rules out any opening of the country’s borders to allow normal international travel from overseas in the foreseeable future. Wu did not name neighbouring India, but health officials have said all the recent outbreaks in China have been caused by the Delta variant of Covid, which was first detected in India earlier this year.

The strict policy will continue despite China having fully vaccinated nearly 76% of its 1.4 billion population against Covid. It has administered 1.072 billion vaccines until Friday, the NHC said.

A total of 37.97 million people in China have also received a third booster dose of the vaccine as of Friday, Wu said, adding that 2.3 billion doses of Covid vaccines had been administered by day’s end on Friday, an increase of about 8.9 million from the previous day.

China is currently scrambling to control the latest Covid-19 outbreak, which has spread to 44 cities in 20 provinces and resulted in 918 confirmed infections since October 17. The outbreak is driven by the more transmissible Delta variant.

Since the initial epidemic in the central Chinese city of Wuhan last year, at least 30 smaller outbreaks have been recorded.The numbers of infections are small but China has responded to the outbreaks with strict lockdowns, mass nucleic acid testing and intra-provincial travel restrictions.

‘Real-world practices have shown that our disease control strategy fits the condition of the country and is science-based. The strategy has also balanced disease control requests and development of society and economy,’ top health official Wu said.

The Chinese mainland on Friday reported 40 new locally transmitted Covid-19 cases, the NHC said in its daily report on Saturday. Of the new local cases, 16 were reported in Heilongjiang; nine in Hebei; three each in Liaoning, Henan and Sichuan; two each in Yunnan and Gansu; and one each in Inner Mongolia and Jiangxi.

Mainland China has reported 97,660 coronavirus cases so far, with 4,636 deaths.