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Beijing, Nov 20 (AFP): China reported its first death from COVID-19 in six months on Sunday as it contends with a rising outbreak despite stringent measures to eliminate infections.
\nThe last major economy still welded to stamping out Covid flare-ups, China has enforced lockdowns, mass testing and quarantines even as the rest of the world adjusts to living with the virus.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, municipal officials announced an 87-year-old man had died in Beijing as the National Health Commission said it had recorded more than 24,000 infections throughout the country in the previous 24 hours.<\/p>\n
While the tally is relatively low compared with other countries, the recent surge is notable in China after months of few cases being announced.<\/p>\n
On November 11, Beijing abruptly declared its most significant easing of coronavirus controls to date, including a reduction of quarantine times for international arrivals.<\/p>\n
But the limited relaxation did not desert the “zero-Covid” approach, even as it has wrecked massive social and economic consequences.<\/p>\n
According to state-run CCTV, Saturday’s COVID-19 death — the first announced since May — involved a mild case, but the elderly man’s condition worsened after a bacterial infection.<\/p>\n
Beijing, where 621 daily cases were reported Sunday, has confined some residents to their homes and ordered others to quarantine centres.<\/p>\n
Unlike during previous outbreaks in the capital however, officials appear to be refraining from imposing harsher restrictions on a public exhausted by exceptionally strict COVID-19 measures.<\/p>\n
In southern manufacturing hub Guangzhou, one of the hotspots of the current outbreak, protesters furious over a renewed lockdown clashed with police last week.<\/p>\n
The megacity reported more than 8,000 daily cases on Sunday, prompting officials to launch a general screening in the central district of Haizhu, home to about 1.8 million people.<\/p>\n
In a sign that China’s reopening may yet be waylaid, people have been urged to avoid “non-imperative” travel around the capital to avoid spreading the virus.<\/p>\n
Some of Beijing’s largest shopping malls were closed Sunday, while others reduced opening hours or banned table service at restaurants.<\/p>\n
Several offices in the business and diplomatic hub of Chaoyang District asked companies to tell their employees to work from home.<\/p>\n
Some parks, sports halls and gyms have also closed.<\/p>\n
The French International School in Beijing told parents they had been instructed “to switch to distance learning”, according to an email obtained by AFP.<\/p>\n
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Beijing, Nov 20 (AFP): China reported its first death from COVID-19 in six months on Sunday as it contends with a rising outbreak despite stringent measures to eliminate infections. The last major economy still welded to stamping out Covid flare-ups, China has enforced lockdowns, mass testing and quarantines even as the rest of the world […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-205300","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205300\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}