Chinese province with 24mn people sealed off over Covid outbreak

China March 14 (Hindustan Times)- China on Monday sealed off the northeastern province of Jilin with over 24 million people following a sharp rise in Covid-19 cases, the first time an entire province has been cut off since the unprecedented lockdown of the central province of Hubei and its capital, Wuhan, in 2020, where the virus was first detected in late 2019.  

The lockdown of Jilin province comes a day after China placed 17.5 million residents of the city of Shenzhen, a technology and business hub, in a lockdown for at least a week.  

China’s authorities are scrambling to control a country-wide surge in cases with mass tests, lockdowns, travel restrictions with new infections being reported from Shanghai, Beijing and Zhejiang.   

China has followed a strict “zero-Covid” policy, which has lately been tweaked to “dynamic zero” policy, which aims to stamp out outbreaks and chains of transmission through mass testing, tracing contacts, quarantine and lockdowns.