China’s stringent lockdown of 13 million residents in Xi’an is part of its larger ‘zero-Covid’ strategy that seeks to eradicate all local transmission.
Thirteen million residents of central China’s Xi’an faced additional misery in the locked-down city as its Covid tracking app crashed this week amid shortages of food and other essential goods, as it deals with the country’s most stringent pandemic measures since the 2020 lockdown in Wuhan.
The app crash has reportedly also prevented many residents from accessing critical medical care as a negative Covid result is a requirement for admission into hospitals.a pregnant woman in the city who had a miscarriage after being refused entry into a hospital. Chinese officials have however defended the stringent lockdown measures and have said free food packages will be delivered to residents.35. That’s the number of new Covid-19 cases that were reported on Wednesday in Xi’an, according toby the Chinese National Health Commission. This is a steep drop from the number of new infections that were being reported in the past few days. In total, Xi’an has reported more than 1,600 new cases since the start of the current outbreak in the city.
that the lockdown will only end once “zero social transmission” is achieved. According to the officials, zero social transmission implies that all new cases in the city are limited to close contacts of previously reported cases.Despite the emergence of the highly transmissible omicron variant of the coronavirus, China has steadfastly stuck to its strategy of eliminating all local transmission of Covid-19.