China reports first COVID-19 deaths in more than a year

BEIJING (AP) – China’s national health authorities on Saturday reported two COVID-19 deaths, the first recorded increase in deaths since January 2021, when the country was battling an omicron-driven current.

The death toll, both in the northeastern Jilin province, brings the coronavirus death toll from the country to 4,638.

China on Saturday reported 2,157 new COVID-19 cases of community transmission, with the majority in Jilin. The province has introduced a travel ban, with people needing police permission to travel across borders.

China has continued to pursue a successful, if threatening, “zero-COVID” strategy since the initial outbreak in Wuhan. The strategy focuses on mass testing and strict losses with residents prohibited from leaving their homes until all new cases are found either in quarantine or through contact tracing.

In practice, it has been reported that the country has seen relatively few infections of the virus because clusters are stamped out as quickly as they are detected. The strategy gained popular support and prevented the large number of deaths in other countries, many of which began to dispense with all sorts of social distancing measures.

With China now facing its worst outbreak since late 2019, officials have promised to double the zero-tolerance strategy to contain the current flow. However, China leader Xi Jinping acknowledged for the first time the imposition of measures on Thursday, saying China should seek “maximum effect” with “minimum cost” to control the virus.

China has recorded 4,636 deaths since the pandemic in central Wuhan city began in late 2019. It revised its death toll once in April 2020, adding new deaths that were not initially counted as the pandemic overwhelmed the city’s hospitals and other systems.

Mainland China’s COVID-19 data are being counted separately from those in Hong Kong, which is a special administrative region in China and is facing a much larger outbreak with a higher death toll.