Well into the third year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the scourge is playing hide and seek with a drop in cases in some parts of the world while spiking elsewhere. Asia crossed one million coronavirus-linked deaths last Friday, a Reuters tally showed, as a spike in Omicron variant infections spreads across the region after starting in nations such as Japan and South Korea. The death toll in Asia, home to more than half the world’s population, accounts for 16% of global deaths related to Covid-19, the tally showed.
It was also on last Friday that mainland China reported over 1,000 new Covid-19 infections in dozens of cities, the highest daily count in about two years, with the Omicron variant forcing a northeastern city to go under lockdown and the financial hub Shanghai to close schools. That is up from fewer than 100 cases just three weeks ago. Changchun, the capital of Jilin province and an important industrial base, has ordered residents to work from home. One person will be allowed out every two days to buy “daily necessities”, and said it would institute mass testing.
Mainland China’s most recent major lockdown came in December when the city of Xi’an kept its 13 million people home for two weeks due to an outbreak. The reported daily count of China’s local cases, the highest since the initial nationwide outbreak in early 2020, is much smaller than many others outside China. The country has also upped its game against Covid-19 by announcing it would for the first time allow the general public to use rapid antigen tests that do not need medical workers to take samples in order to ensure infections are identified at an early stage. Though Covid-19 was first detected in China in late 2019, the government has kept its case count extremely low by international standards with a combination of snap lockdowns, mass testing and largely closed borders.
Hong Kong, witnessing a surge of Covid-19 infections, is another location of concern. In total since early 2020, the global financial hub has recorded almost 650,000 Covid-19 infections and about 3,500 deaths — most of them in the past two weeks. Hong Kong registered the most deaths per million people globally in the week to March 9, according to data publication Our World in Data. Most have been unvaccinated senior citizens. “Over 90% of the deaths were those who had not been fully vaccinated. We need to catch up and vaccinate every Hong Kong citizen,” leader Carrie Lam said. Just over 53% of those over 80 are vaccinated, government data show.
It is matter of great relief that in Qatar, revised Covid-19 measures, including the easing of some restrictions, came into effect on Saturday. These include the lifting of restrictions with regard to mosques, transportation capacity as well as buffet and shisha services. Thanks to stringent measures, the daily cases dropped below hundred on Saturday, compared to a recent peak of 4,206 on January 12, 2022.