Most of Shanghai has stopped the spread of the coronavirus in the community and fewer than 1 million people remain under strict lockdown, authorities said Monday, as the city moves toward reopening and economic data showed the gloomy impact of China’s “zero-COVID” policy.
Vice Mayor Zong Ming said 15 out of Shanghai’s 16 districts had eliminated virus transmission among those not already in quarantine.
“The epidemic in our city is under effective control. Prevention measures have achieved incremental success,” Zong said at a news briefing.
Supermarkets, malls and restaurants were allowed to reopen Monday with limits on the numbers of people and mandated “no contact” transactions. But restrictions on movement remain in place and the subway train system remains closed for now.
Even as case numbers fall, city and national authorities have sent mixed messages about the state of Shanghai’s outbreak and when life can return to normal in the city of 25 million, where many residents have been confined to their homes, compounds and neighborhoods for more than 50 days. A prospective date of June 1 has been given for a full re-opening.
Zong said that authorities “remain sober” about the possibility of the outbreak rebounding, particularly as reports of new infections continue to come in from centralized isolation centers and older, rundown neighborhoods.
“Citywide, our prevention efforts are still not firmly enough established and it requires all of our continuing hard work and the cooperation of the broad masses of citizens and friends … to restore the normal running of the city in an orderly fashion,” Zong said.
Shanghai’s ruthless and frequently chaotic implementation of virus restrictions has sparked protests over the lack of food, medical care, freedom of movement and already highly limited privacy rights.
Despite that, China has rejected all criticisms “zero-COVID,” including from the World Health Organization. The ruling Communist Party says it is committed to “resolutely fighting any attempts to distort, question or dismiss China’s anti-COVID policy.”
China reported 1,159 cases of infection Monday, the vast majority in Shanghai. Almost all were infections without symptoms.
In Beijing, where a much smaller outbreak has led to mass testing and a lockdown imposed building by building, 54 cases were reported. Authorities have ordered people to work from home, moved schools online and limited restaurants to take-out only in the capital.
China’s strict lockdowns have played havoc with employment, supply chains and the economy in general, and data released Monday showed factory and consumer activity was even weaker than expected in April.
Retail sales plunged 11.1%, while manufacturing output sank 2.9% after factories closed and those that kept operating with employees living at their workplace were forced to reduce output due to disruption in supplies of components.
About half of the 9,000 biggest industrial enterprises in Shanghai are back at work after controls that shut down most of the city starting in late March eased, said Fu Linghui, director of statistics for the National Bureau of Statistics.
Private sector economists have China’s economic growth forecasts for this year to as low as 2%, well below the ruling party target of 5.5% and last year’s 8.1% expansion.
Despite such news, politics continues to drive the ruling party’s response to the pandemic. Looking ahead to a key conclave later this year, party leaders said after a May 5 meeting that containing outbreaks would take priority over the economy.
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Associated Press writer Joe McDonald contributed to this report.
North Korea on Monday reported 8 new deaths and 392,920 more people with fevers amid a growing COVID-19 outbreak as leader Kim Jong Un blasted officials over delays in medicine deliveries and ordered his military to get involved in the pandemic response in the country’s capital, Pyongyang.
The North’s emergency anti-virus headquarters said more than 1.2 million people fell ill amid a rapid spread of fever since late April and about 564,860 are currently under quarantine. The eight new deaths reported in the 24 hours through 6 p.m. Sunday brought its death toll to 50.
State media didn’t specify how many of the fever cases and deaths were confirmed as COVID-19 cases. Experts say North Korea likely lacks testing supplies and equipment to confirm coronavirus infections in large numbers and is mostly relying on isolating people with symptoms at shelters.
Experts say the failure to slow the virus could have dire consequences for North Korea, considering its poor health care system. Its population of 26 million people are believed to be mostly unvaccinated after their government had shunned millions of shots offered by the U.N.-backed COVAX distribution program, likely over concerns related to international monitoring requirements.
North Korea acknowledged its first COVID-19 outbreak last Thursday when it announced that an unspecified number of people in Pyongyang tested positive for the omicron outbreak. It had previously held for more than two years to a widely doubted claim of a perfect record keeping out the virus that has spread to nearly every place in the world.
Kim during a ruling party Politburo meeting on Sunday criticized government and health officials over what he portrayed as a botched pandemic response, saying state medicine supplies aren’t being supplied to pharmacies in time because of their “irresponsible work attitude” and lack of organization, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said.
The Politburo had issued an emergency order to immediately release and quickly distribute state medicine reserves and for pharmacies to switch over to 24-hour shifts, but Kim said such steps weren’t being properly implemented. Kim ordered that the medical units of his military to get involved in stabilizing the supply of medicine in Pyongyang, KCNA said.
State media had previously said a workforce of more than 1.3 million – including public health officials, teachers and medical university students – were mobilized to find people with fevers or other symptoms so that they could be quarantined.
North Korea’s claim of a perfect record in keeping out the virus for 2 1/2 years was widely doubted. But its extremely strict border closure, large-scale quarantines and propaganda that stressed anti-virus controls as a matter of “national existence” may have staved off a huge outbreak until now.
While North Korea could suffer huge fatalities if it doesn’t quickly receive international shipments of medical supplies, it’s not immediately clear whether the North’s admission of the outbreak communicates a willingness to receive outside help.
Rival South Korea has offered to send vaccines and other supplies, but Seoul officials say the North has not made such a request. But some experts say Kim’s comments last week during another Politburo meeting, where he praised China’s pandemic response and urged his officials to learn from it, suggest that the North could be more willing to accept help from its major ally.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said last week that Beijing was ready to offer North Korea help but said he had no information about any such request being made.
Even as he called for stronger preventive measures to slow the spread of COVID-19, Kim has also stressed that the country’s economic goals should be met, which likely means huge groups will continue to gather at agricultural, industrial and construction sites.
While accelerating his missile tests in a brinkmanship aimed at pressuring the United States for economic and security concessions, Kim has been grappling with domestic challenges at home as pandemic-related difficulties unleashed further shock on an economy broken by decades of mismanagement and crippling U.S.-led sanctions against the North, pushing him to perhaps the toughest moment since he took power in 2011.
Total Doses Distributed = 736,970,055. Total Doses Administered = 581,670,838. Number of People Receiving 1 or More Doses = 257,846,006. Number of People Fully Vaccinated = 220,597,701.
North Korea has confirmed 15 more deaths and hundreds of thousands of additional patients with flu-like symptoms as it mobilizes more than a million health and other workers to try to suppress the country’s first COVID-19 outbreak, state media reported Sunday.
After maintaining a widely disputed claim to be coronavirus-free for more than two years, North Korea announced Thursday that it had found its first COVID-19 patients since the pandemic began.
It has since said a fever has spread across the country “explosively” since late April but hasn’t disclosed exactly how many COVID-19 cases it has found. Some experts say North Korea lacks the diagnostic kits needed to test a large number of suspected COVID-19 patients.
The additional deaths reported Sunday took the country’s reported fever-related fatalities to 42. The official Korean Central News Agency also reported that another 296,180 people with flu symptoms had been tallied, taking the reported total to 820,620.
The outbreak has triggered concern about a humanitarian crisis in North Korea because most of the country’s 26 million people are believed to be unvaccinated against the coronavirus and its public health care system has been in shambles for decades. Some experts say North Korea might suffer huge fatalities if it doesn’t immediately receive outside shipments of vaccines, medicines and other medical supplies.
Since Thursday, North Korea has imposed a nationwide lockdown to fight the virus. Observers say that could further strain the country’s fragile economy, which has suffered in recent years due to sharply reduced external trade caused by pandemic-related border shutdowns, punishing U.N. economic sanctions over its nuclear program and its own mismanagement.
During a meeting on the outbreak Saturday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un described the outbreak as a historically “great upheaval” and called for unity between the government and people to stabilize the outbreak as quickly as possible.
KCNA said Sunday that more than 1.3 million people have been engaged in works to examine and treat sick people and raise public awareness of hygiene. It said everyone with fevers and others with abnormal symptoms was being put in quarantine and treated.
Of those with symptoms, 496,030 have recovered, while as of Saturday 324,4550 were still taking receiving treatment, KCNA reported, citing the country’s emergency epidemic prevention center as saying.
State media reports said Kim and other senior North Korean officials are donating their private reserve medicines to support the country’s anti-pandemic fight. During Saturday’s meeting, Kim expressed optimism that the country could bring the outbreak under control, saying most transmissions are occurring within communities that are isolated from one another and not spreading from region to region.
Total Doses Distributed = 736,964,755. Total Doses Administered = 581,376,728. Number of People Receiving 1 or More Doses = 257,804,117. Number of People Fully Vaccinated = 220,561,439.
South Africa is experiencing a surge of new COVID-19 cases driven by two omicron sub-variants, according to health experts.
For about three weeks the country has seen increasing numbers of new cases and somewhat higher hospitalizations, but not increases in severe cases and deaths, said Professor Marta Nunes, a researcher at Vaccine and Infectious Diseases Analytics at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto.
“We’re still very early in this increase period, so I don’t want to really call it a wave,” Nunes said. “We are seeing a slight, a small increase in hospitalizations and really very few deaths.”
South Africa’s new cases have gone from an average of 300 per day in early April to about 8,000 per day this week. Nunes says the actual number of new cases is probably much higher because the symptoms are mild and many who get sick are not getting tested.
South Africa’s new surge is from two variations of omicron, BA.4 and BA.5, which appear to be very much like the original strain of omicron that was first identified in South Africa and Botswana late last year and swept around the globe.
“The majority of new cases are from these two strains. They are still omicron … but just genomically somewhat different,” said Nunes. The new versions appear to be able to infect people who have immunity from earlier COVID infections and vaccinations but they cause generally mild disease, she said. In South Africa, 45% of adults are fully vaccinated, although about 85% of the population is thought to have some immunity based on past exposure to the virus.
“It looks like the vaccines still protect against severe disease,” Nunes said.
Nunes said that the BA.4 and BA.5 strains of omicron have spread to other countries in southern Africa and a few European countries, but it is too early to tell if they will spread across the globe, as omicron did.
The increase in COVID cases is coming as South Africa is entering the Southern Hemisphere’s colder winter months and the country is seeing a rise in cases of flu.
At a COVID testing center in the Chiawelo area of Soweto, many people come in to be tested for COVID, but find out they have flu.
“Now we’re in flu season … so it’s flu versus COVID-19,” said Magdeline Matsoso, site manager at the Chiawelo vaccination center. She said people come for testing because they have COVID symptoms.
“When we do the tests, you find that the majority of them, they are negative when it comes to COVID, but they do have flu symptoms,” said Matsoso. “So they get flu treatment and then they go home because the majority is related to flu and not COVID.”
Vuyo Lumkwani was one of those who came to get tested.
“I wasn’t feeling well when I woke up this morning. I woke up with body pains, a headache, blocked (nose), feeling dizzy, so I decided to come here,” she said.
“I was terrified about my symptoms because I thought it might be COVID-19, but I told myself that I’d be OK because I have been vaccinated,” said Lumkwani. She said she was relieved to be diagnosed with flu and advised to go home with some medications and rest.
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AP journalist Sebabatso Mosamo in Johannesburg contributed.
