(Shanghai) China on Wednesday announced a record 20,000 COVID-19 infections in the last 24 hours, most of them preparing to open a 40,000-seat field hospital in Shanghai.
Posted at 7:37
Thanks to the very tough measures united under the term COVID-19 Zero, the country where the coronavirus was first detected in late 2019 was able to manage until March 2021 to prevent further outbreaks of the disease.
But the Omicron variant defeated this strategy, with daily reports now surpassing the official counts of the first epidemic wave in Wuhan (center).
The most populous country in the world reported 20,472 positive cases on Wednesday in the last 24 hours, which is very low compared to most countries’ balance sheets, but higher than China, where the daily totals in February still did not cross 100.
The bar of 10,000 cases per day was crossed on Sunday alone.
No new deaths were reported, the health ministry said. The last two deaths officially announced in the country are from mid-March.
Shanghai, the country’s largest city, reported more than 80% of new positive cases, almost total detention since last week.
The news agency China News announced that the city, with a population of 25 million, will transform a huge exhibition center with a capacity of 40,000 beds into a field hospital.
The National Convention and Exhibition Center hosts an annual Import Fair hosted by Chinese officials.
Although most of the cases identified in Shanghai are asymptomatic, anyone who comes in positive, including children, is kept in solitary confinement at centers provided for this purpose.
This approach has been challenged on social media, with children and infants also being isolated from their parents if they are tested positive and their parents negative.
In a city called Suzhou, 70 km from Shanghai, health officials announced this weekend that they had discovered a mutation of a previously unknown omicron variant in national or international databases.
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