The country’s strict coronavirus containment approach is still able to control the virus, despite the high transmissibility of COVID variants and asymptomatic carriers, an official from China’s National Health Commission told a news conference. China’s zero-covid-19 policy includes lockdown, quarantine and strict controls, aimed at stopping the spread of the coronavirus. Asked if there would be a policy change in the short term, disease control official Hu Xiang said China’s measures are “absolutely correct, as well as the most economical and effective.” “We must uphold the principle of putting people and lives first and the broader strategy of preventing imports from abroad and internal recoveries,” he said. The update followed a week in which markets rallied on hopes that China would ease restrictions, further bolstered on Friday when a former disease control official told a banking conference that China would make “substantial” changes to its COVID policy next months. Some regions were guilty of unscientific lockdowns, officials said, singling out the southwestern cities of Nanchong and Bijie and officials in the cities of Zhengzhou in central Henan province deliberately turning the health codes of thousands of citizens into red. . “We pay great attention to these problems and correct them,” said Tuo Jia, another disease control official. Areas affected by the epidemic must meet the needs of the elderly, the sick, the disabled, the young and the pregnant, Tuo said. Officials said they will begin a push to increase vaccinations among the elderly, noting that while 86.35 percent of citizens age 60 and older are fully vaccinated, fewer people age 80 and older have been vaccinated and boosters. China reported 3,837 new COVID-19 infections for Friday, of which 657 were symptomatic and 3,180 were asymptomatic, a slight decrease from the six-month high of 4,045 new COVID-19 cases reported a day earlier. Officials in Guangzhou said on Saturday that the southern metropolis was facing its most serious and complicated outbreak of the virus in three years, with 111 new locally transmitted symptoms and 635 asymptomatic cases reported a day earlier. Reporting by Ryan Woo in Beijing and David Kirton in Shenzhen. Editing by Michael Perry and William Mallard Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
