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China seals off city of 1.5 million people over worst COVID-19 outbreak in a year

The city of Zhangjiajie, next to Nanjing in Central China’s Hunan Province was ordered sealed Sunday, preventing people from leaving their homes.

A resident receives a nucleic acid test for the Covid-19 coronavirus in Nanjing in China's eastern Jiangsu province on August 2, 2021, amid the country's most widespread coronavirus outbreak in months. — Photo: © AFP
A resident receives a nucleic acid test for the Covid-19 coronavirus in Nanjing in China's eastern Jiangsu province on August 2, 2021, amid the country's most widespread coronavirus outbreak in months. — Photo: © AFP

The city of Zhangjiajie, next to Nanjing in Central China’s Hunan Province was ordered sealed Sunday, preventing people from leaving their homes. In a subsequent order on Tuesday, officials said no one, whether tourist or resident, could leave the city.

While the number of cases in the city of 1.5 million people is relatively low – only 19 cases have been reported since last week, according to CTV News Canada – virus sequencing has found that individual cases linked to Zhangjiajie’s outbreak have spread to at least five provinces.

The city government’s Communist Party disciplinary committee on Wednesday issued a list of 20 local officials who “had a negative impact” on pandemic prevention and control work who would be punished.

The list includes district officials, hospital management staff, and related personnel to the local performance show for tourists. Apparently, the performances have caused a huge spread of the virus.

Zhangjiajie, in Hunan province, is famous for sandstone cliffs, caves, forests, and waterfalls, as well as the Tian Men Shan Temple, built during the Ming Dynasty. Source – huangdan2060, Public Domain.

China has been virtually free of the COVID-19 virus, due to very strict border controls and local distancing and quarantine measures that have managed to stamp out any flare-ups over the past year and a half.

However, the country is now on high alert since the discovery of outbreaks of coronavirus cases in 17 provinces associated with the international airport in the eastern city of Nanjing.

The cases associated with Nanjing are the Delta variant, and sequencing shows that cases in Yangzhou, a city next to Nanjing, are the same. As of Wednesday, per the Global Times, patients related to the Zhangjiajie outbreak have been reported in eight provinces and regions including Beijing.

According to FOX News, as of Tuesday, China has given more than 1.71 billion coronavirus vaccine doses to its population of 1.4 billion. It is not clear how many people have only received first doses and how many second doses have been given. Officials have said earlier that about 40 percent of the population is fully vaccinated.

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