China is sending thousands of health workers to Shanghai, including 2,000 members of the military, as the coastal economic hub struggles with a COVID-19 surge.
The city is attempting to test all of its 26 million residents after a shutdown of the eastern half of Shanghai was extended to the whole city, according to Reuters.
Personnel from the People’s Liberation Army will support logistics alongside nearly 40,000 health workers who have been sent to the port city to deal with the omicron wave and its subvariant, BA.2.
The shutdown has sparked reports of panic-buying of food, struggles to get medical treatment and complaints about infected children being separated from parents as Beijing enforces its zero-COVID policy.
“The city will continue to implement seal and control management and strictly implement ’staying at home’ except for medical treatment,” the city government said via WeChat.
The effort is likely China’s largest since the virus broke out in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019.
While the U.S. and Western nations try to live with the virus, experts say Chinese President Xi Jinping is unlikely to back off his strict virus policies at least until after the 20th Party Congress this October.
Scientists are worried that China is ill-suited to deal with the omicron wave because it lacks widespread immunity from prior infections and is using vaccines that are considered less effective than messenger-RNA shots in other nations.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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