The 2022 Beijing Olympics begins in three and a half weeks. Officials are confident that their “closed-loop” system can keep COVID away from the Games, even as the first local transmissions of the Omicron variant become apparent.
After two weeks of arduous lockdown, during which the residents of Xi’an complained of food shortages and expressed outrage over medical services access, officials now say that the COVID-19 outbreak is under control.
For the fourth time this year, Chinese health authorities are taking swift measures to contain a small Delta-driven spike of COVID-19. With just over 100 days until the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, the capital announced especially strict requirements for visitors to enter.
Also: Will China pivot to mRNA vaccines?
China’s health authorities are sticking with their strict playbook to contain and eliminate outbreaks of COVID-19. After over 1,200 were infected since July 20 in a Delta-driven spike, zero local infections were again officially reported for August 22.
China’s latest COVID-19 outbreak is small in case count but geographically dispersed, with 35 cities reporting infections. The Delta variant has made its way to Beijing and Wuhan, two politically sensitive cities that took strict measures to contain the outbreaks.
Nanjing, in eastern China, is facing the country’s largest COVID-19 outbreak since January. At the same time, many other cities, including the capital Beijing, reported cases connected to domestic tourists. Can China maintain its “COVID zero” policy?
A recent outbreak of COVID-19 in Taiwan has exposed flaws in the government’s pandemic response plans. While the ruling Democratic Progressive Party attempts to get things under control, its political enemies are circling.
The G7 world leaders concluded their first in-person summit since the beginning of the pandemic by criticizing China over several issues, including human rights. They also agreed to compete with China in infrastructure and vaccine distribution in developing countries.
The highly transmissible Delta variant of COVID-19, first identified in India, is proving hard to control in Guangzhou. Like with other localized outbreaks over the past year, China is attempting to isolate the virus by testing nearly every resident in the city — 18 million tests in just three days.