The epidemic has surged in many places in China

Just a week after the northern Chinese city of Shijiazhuang announced that residents would no longer have to show a negative certificate to take public transport for the novel coronavirus, local authorities have placed much of the city under lockdown for five days due to a surge in infections.

Just days after telling residents to stop requiring their entire staff to do nucleic acid tests, many communities in Shanghai are now asking them to undergo frequent tests for the novel coronavirus.

Officials across much of Beijing ordered schools closed and most businesses closed as the number of daily confirmed cases rose over the past week to more than 1,400 a day and the government acknowledged the first coronavirus-related death in months.

China announced earlier this month that it would optimize measures to contain the novel coronavirus to reduce the disruption to life caused by lockdown, centralized quarantine and daily mass nucleic acid testing. China’s draconian measures to contain the coronavirus have isolated it from much of the world, dragged down its economy and disrupted the lives of millions of its people, as government leaders search for ways to calibrate them.

The number of confirmed cases in China has risen almost every day since late October, with new cases reported every day in various provinces, bringing the total number of confirmed cases nationwide to more than 25,000. The number of confirmed cases announced Tuesday was 27,307, close to the Chinese one-day record of 28,973 set in Shanghai on April 14, at the beginning of the lockdown.
Forty-nine cities, representing a third of China’s population and two-fifths of its economic output, are now under partial or full lockdown, up sharply from a week ago, according to Japanese brokerage Nomura.

China is the only major country in the world still struggling to eliminate the virus, which the ruling Communist Party insists is the only way to protect people’s lives. But even as the government has vowed to stick to the policy, officials have begun to acknowledge the financial strain.

On Nov. 11, Chinese officials cited a shortage of centralized isolation beds and facilities, as well as a shortage of staff to track down contacts, as they announced efforts to develop more precise containment measures. The government has adjusted regulations on epidemic prevention, including no more centralized isolation of secondary contacts of infected people and discouraging nucleic acid testing of all employees.