China’s commercial capital of Shanghai was dealt a blow on May 2 as authorities reported 58 new COVID-19 cases outside areas under strict lockdown, while Beijing pressed on with testing millions of people on a May Day holiday few were celebrating.
Shanghai’s bespoke approach to tackling coronavirus outbreaks is coming under strain as new cases rise in the Chinese metropolis, with authorities reluctant to impose a comprehensive lockdown as other cities have done.
Mainland China reported more than 1,500 new local COVID-19 infections on March 12, the most since the first nationwide outbreak in early 2020, as the Omicron variant prompted Beijing to introduce self-testing kits for the first time.
China detected three new cases of COVID-19 among Olympic Games related personnel on Feb. 13, the same number as a day earlier, the organizing committee of the Beijing 2022 Winter Games said on Feb. 14.
Jane Qiu, a freelance science writer based in Beijing, published an overview of her efforts to investigate the lab-leak theory for the origin of COVID-19. In another update, the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee is scheduled to meet on February 15 to discuss an amended Emergency Use Authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children 6 months through 4 years of age.
Beijing Olympics organizers said on Jan. 23 they had confirmed 72 cases of COVID-19 among 2,586 Games-related personnel entering China from Jan. 4 to Jan. 22, with no cases among 171 athletes and team officials arriving in that period.
A senior Chinese epidemiologist said the United States should be the priority in the next phase of investigations into the origin of Covid-19 after a study showed the disease could have been circulating there as early as December 2019, state media said on June 17.
Taiwan directly accused China for the first time on May 26 of blocking a deal with Germany’s BioNTech SE for Covid-19 vaccines, in an escalating war of words after Beijing offered the shots to the island via a Chinese company.
The World Health Organization (WHO) approved for emergency use a Covid-19 vaccine from China’s state-owned drugmaker Sinopharm on May 7, bolstering Beijing’s push for a bigger role in inoculating the world.
A joint China-World Health Organization (WHO) study into Covid-19 provided no credible answers about how the pandemic began, and more rigorous investigations are required – with or without Beijing’s involvement, a group of international scientists and researchers said on April 7.