China records highest caseload since start of pandemic

On Thursday, China recorded a record number of daily Covid-19 infections as it imposed localised lockdowns in many cities, including Beijing, and local officials battled to control the escalating outbreak in light of the controversial “zero-Covid” strategy’s promise of being eased.

Mainland China recorded more than 31,600 Covid infections on Wednesday, exceeding the previous record of 29,317 set in April during the Shanghai outbreak. This is the biggest daily total since the pandemic began in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019.

Over 310,000 cases have been filed since November 1 in total, a surge that has left local administrations in China scrambling for solutions to stop the spread.

For the third day in a row, Beijing saw over 1,600 new cases of Covid-19, and one fatality from the infection brought the total number of deaths from the continuing outbreak to six.

“The number of new cases of the epidemic continues to increase, and the epidemic spreading significantly,” Xu Hejian, a Beijing government spokesperson was quoted as saying on Thursday.

Xu said that at present the “…domestic epidemic points are many…the number of new cases of the epidemic in Beijing is continuously rising at a high level…and the capital’s prevention and control work are in a critical period of epidemic handling”.

On Thursday, targeted lockdowns were implemented in a number of more Beijing neighbourhoods as city officials tried to sever transmission lines.

In order to accommodate the growing number of Covid-19 patients, Beijing has turned an exhibition centre into a temporary medical facility.

The city has already shut down numerous eateries, office buildings, and shopping centres. Access to many housing complexes has also been suspended, particularly in the city’s most populous and hardest-hit Chaoyang region.

Moreover half of the cases on the mainland continued to be reported by the two large cities of Guangzhou in the south and Chongqing in the southwest, and various types of restrictions were still in place within these cities.

In Guangzhou, a number of companies and residential areas are still sealed down, while as of Thursday, mass testing was still going on in Chongqing, where locals have been ordered not to leave the city.

Although the number of Covid-19 cases and fatalities in China is still low, the sharpest increase since the pandemic began is expected to slow even the gradual relaxation of Beijing’s “zero-Covid” policy, which has stoked public resentment and slowed the economy.

A day after the two groups fought over Covid-19 restrictions and working conditions, tensions between employees and security personnel at the largest iPhone factory in the world, located in Zhengzhou, central China, persisted on Thursday.

Production was hampered by a tense confrontation between workers at the Foxconn Technology Group plant, which manufactures Apple iPhones and has been troubled for weeks by Covid-19.

“Tech giant Foxconn said it will give newly recruited employees at the world’s largest iPhone assembly plant in the central city of Zhengzhou an option to return home with severance pay after accusations over contract fraud and poor pandemic control measures led to worker unrest,” the Sixthtone news website said in a report on Thursday.