Chicoms now overwhelmed with Delta variant virus

 Washington Examiner:

Outbreaks of the delta variant in China have caused the governing party to revert back to strict lockdown measures that will imperil the 2022 Winter Olympic Games that are set to begin next February in Beijing.

The highly contagious COVID-19 variant has spurred new outbreaks across a country that, until recently, had been relatively successful at suppressing clusters of new cases thanks to strict quarantine measures and border control policies. The country’s gravitation toward the more extreme shutdowns and restrictions on travel is not sustainable, though, given the toll it would take on the country’s economy, as well as foreign spectators’ ability to see the games in person.

A new flare-up that reached at least 15 provinces was linked to the international airport in Nanjing, the capital city of the eastern Jiangsu province, according to the Associated Press. Now, the government is reverting back to severe containment measures, dubbed “zero-tolerance,” that essentially seal cities off from the outside world at the expense of the economy.

“Lockdown measures have been rapidly imposed in many parts of China,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations. “I have not seen containment measures pursued in such an aggressive manner since April 2020.”

The Chinese government’s move on Sunday to close off the city of Zhangjiajie, home to about 1.5 million people, resembled the country’s early pandemic response to shut down the entire city of Wuhan, where the first COVID-19 outbreaks exploded in early 2020. While the heavy-handed isolation strategy worked to keep outbreaks at bay last year, reverting to that policy could hinder the country’s economy ahead of orchestrating the games.

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The Chicoms are responding with a heavy hand even though the Delta variant in the US anyway has not been as lethal.  While the focus of the article is on preparations for the Winter Olympics, it looks like China has bigger problems on its agenda.

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