Third Chinese city confined on second anniversary of first COVID-19 death

China on Tuesday confined the residents of a third city as the country battles multiple COVID-19 outbreaks on the second anniversary of the first recorded death from the pandemic.

Since that January 11, 2020, when that disease still did not have a specific name, COVID-19 has caused almost 5.5 million deaths in the world, which recovers restrictions to stop the advance of the new omicron variant.

In China, which had controlled the initial outbreak in Wuhan with a mix of lockdowns, border closures and massive screening, the spread of new outbreaks has prompted authorities to resume strict measures weeks before the start of the Beijing Winter Olympics. .

Authorities in the city of Anyang, in central Henan province, ordered its five million residents on Monday night to stay at home and not drive in private vehicles, the official Xinhua agency said.

They thus join the one million people confined since last week in Yuzhou, in the same province, and the 13 million inhabitants of the historic city of Xian, which entered its third week of confinement.

China registered 110 new local cases of coronavirus on Tuesday, a ridiculous number compared to the hundreds of thousands that emerge daily in countries like the United States.

But the strategy in China is one of maximum prudence, especially in the run-up to the Beijing Games, which begin in February with strict sanitary protocols.

The semi-autonomous city of Hong Kong, which follows the same approach, announced Tuesday the closure of preschool and primary education until early February.

For its part, Japan extended until the end of February the harsh border restrictions that prevent almost all arrivals from abroad and announced the reopening of mass vaccination centers in the face of an upturn in cases linked to omicron.

Protests in Bolivia

Health experts insist that vaccines remain the most effective weapon against the pandemic, although the skeptical movement towards these immunizers has been marked somewhat by the case of tennis player Novak Djokovic.

The Serbian won the legal battle against his deportation from Australia for not being vaccinated and on Tuesday he trained for the first time at the Australian Open, in which he hopes to participate in a few days if the authorities do not cancel his visa again.

In Bolivia, several thousand people marched in La Paz on Monday against the new vaccination card imposed to access public places, currently temporarily suspended because its entry into force saturated the inoculation centers.

“They are forcing us to use those experimental vaccines”Said Gregorio Gómez, a neighborhood leader who participated in the peaceful 12 km march between the city of El Alto and La Paz.

Italy also applies since Monday measures against the unvaccinated, who will not be able to use a wide range of public transport or access restaurants, gyms or cinemas.

“Most of the problems we face now depend on the fact that there are unvaccinated people“Said its Prime Minister Mario Draghi.

And in Mexico, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced that he had contracted the disease for the second time, although he was only experiencing mild symptoms.

Good news came from the pharmaceutical side. Pfizer said Monday that it expects to have a specific version of its omicron variant vaccine ready in March.

And the European Union’s drug regulator said on the same day that it expects to approve this laboratory’s anti-COVID pill in weeks.