(Photo : Photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)
BEIJING, CHINA - SEPTEMBER 05: A booth displaying China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd. shows a COVID-19 vaccine candidate during the 2020 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) at Beijing Olympic Park on September 5, 2020 in Beijing, China. As China recovers from the COVID-19 epidemic, about 2,000 Chinese and foreign enterprises will participate and showcase their newest technology in public health and digital technology in the China International Fair for Trade in Services.
As COVID-19 continues to spike, according to the latest reports, Chinese officials order a city to be placed under lockdown protocols which is a home for 11 million individuals.
China Locks Down Part of Province
Based on the officials who are handling the situation, there are 120 reported new cases in the province of Hebei, which is only the neighbor of the country's capital, Beijing.
According to the South China Morning Post, all but one of those detected cases were found in the city of Shijiazhuang.
Despite the movement on the vaccination process of Beijing in its population, a lot of citizens are still concerned regarding the increasing number in the province of Hebei and the district of Gaocheng.
Aside from the initial restriction imposed by the officials in China which is to ban all of the residents from leaving the city of Shijiazhuang, they have also residents of the Gaocheng District from making any movement, which is a home for close to 800,000 individuals.
In order to ensure and contain the said spike in the infections, the head of the transport bureau of the city shared on Thursday that city of Shijiazhuang had suspended all of the means of transportation that are leaving the city to avoid further infections outside the area.
The said lockdown will also allow the officials handling the situation to continue its mass testing all over the city.
Before the lockdown, the local government had tested an estimated two million persons by Wednesday.
According to some experts regarding the current pandemic, they are not only concerned about the current large spike of cases, as it is also alarming that the coronavirus had been spreading in the area for some time unnoticed and undetected, CNBC reported.
Based on the experts who examined the single case that was detected outside the city of Shijiazhuang, which is in the neighboring city of Xingtai, which is one of the oldest cities in Northern China, with gene sequencing results indicating that the case is similar to 'European strain.'
The coronavirus threat in the cities in the province of Hebei has been heightened based on some experts due to existing respiratory illnesses and diseases that the population has, as the cities are considered the most polluted cities and cities with the worst air quality, and in the past, Xingtai even ranked first in the cities with worst air quality in China along with Shijiazhuang.
According to the report of Al Jazeera, the new cases spike as Beijing currently attempts to vaccinate the majority of its population ahead of the Lunar New Year, which will occur in February.
Moreover, China is now using a vaccine that was developed by a pharmaceutical company in China, Sinopharm.
Despite its low effective rate compared to other vaccines, which is only at 79% after injected for two doses, compared against the vaccine made by AstraZeneca which has an efficacy rate of 90%, still, the Chinese government opted to choose the vaccine which is manufactured in their soil.
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