Covid-19 cases continue to rise in China's worst outbreak since Wuhan
Source: CNN
China reported thousands of new local Covid-19 cases Sunday amid the worst outbreak in the country since Wuhan in early 2020, according to the National Health Commission (NHC).
Health officials said 2,125 cases were reported across 58 cities in 19 of 31 mainland provinces, marking the fourth consecutive day China reported more than 1,000 daily local cases. More than 10,000 cases have been reported since the latest outbreak began in early March, the NHC said.
Saturday, the commission reported 3,122 local cases -- the highest number of daily infections since the Wuhan outbreak and the first time new cases have exceeded 3,000 in a day, NHC data showed.
Throughout the pandemic, China has adhered to a strict zero-Covid policy that aims to stamp out all outbreaks and chains of transmission using a combination of border controls, mass testing, quarantine procedures and lockdowns.
Two major Chinese cities -- northeastern industrial hub Changchun and southern economic hub Shenzhen -- are under lockdown, with more than 26 million residents forbidden from leaving their homes.
Public transport has also been suspended, as well as indoor dining, while all public venues excluding grocery stores and pharmacies have been closed, the authorities said.
Chinese officials have been under pressure to bring outbreaks under control and have been reprimanded by higher administrations for "poor performance" as cases grow.
China has dismissed at least 26 government officials this month in cities where outbreaks have occurred, including a mayor and a director of municipal health commission in Jilin province, and a vice mayor and a deputy director of the provincial police department in Guangdong.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/14/china/china-covid-outbreak-monday-intl-hnk/index.html
Author did not offer which COVID variant is causing the new surge.
= new reply since forum marked as read
and advises that children shouldn't be vaccinated. 
The timing will be the key here.
Inactivated-virus vaccines contain SARS-CoV-2 particles that have been chemically treated to make it impossible for them to cause an infection. Stable and relatively easy to manufacture, such vaccines have been distributed widely as part of China’s global vaccine diplomacy, helping them to become the jab of choice in many countries. But a multitude of experiments show that they are consistently hobbled by Omicron.
Many people who receive two jabs of an inactivated vaccine fail to produce immune molecules that can counter Omicron transmission. And even after a third dose of an inactivated vaccine, an individual’s levels of ‘neutralizing’ antibodies, which provide a potent safeguard against viral infection of cells, tend to remain low. A third shot of another type of vaccine, such as those based on messenger RNA or purified proteins, seems to offer better protection against Omicron.
The findings are prompting many scientists and public-health researchers to re-evaluate the role of inactivated vaccines in the global fight against COVID-19.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00079-6
If SinoVac and SinoPharm vaccines are ineffective, the whole of China is unvaccinated.
