Covid wave in Hong Kong has resulted in more than 32,000 new cases and 190 deaths

Hong Kong reported more than 32,000 new Covid cases and 190 deaths, underscoring the territory’s struggle to contain the latest wave of a pandemic that also threatens to expand on the mainland.

China reported more than 3,300 Covid-19 infections on Saturday as the country faces its worst outbreak since the early days of the pandemic and officials step up efforts to stem the spread.

Vice Premier Sun Chunlan vowed on Saturday to take stringent measures to stem regional clusters and urged officials to roll out rapid antigen tests on top of nucleic acid testing to keep up with omicron’s spread. The country should “resolutely hold the bottom line of avoiding resurgence of scale,” she said.

Hong Kong reported more than 32,000 new Covid cases and 190 deaths, health official Dr. Albert Au said at a briefing. Persistent daily case counts of at least 30,000 a day show coronavirus clusters still exist in the city, Au said.

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New cases include 13,335 confirmed by nucleic acid tests and 19,095 by rapid antigen tests. The city recorded 190 new Covid deaths, aged 39 to 105 years old, and 101 patients are in intensive care units, Hospital Authority Chief Manager Dr Sara Ho said. There were also 74 “backlogged” fatalities.

About 300,000 people in Hong Kong are currently in isolation or under home quarantine, chief executive Carrie Lam said at a press conference on Sunday. The city plans to mobilize all sectors to fight Covid and help quell the fifth wave of the pandemic.

China reported more than 3,300 Covid-19 infections on Saturday as the country faces its worst outbreak since the early days of the pandemic and officials step up efforts to stem the spread.

There were 1,807 confirmed local infections and 1,315 asymptomatic cases, the National Health Commission said on Sunday. The northeastern province of Jilin accounted for more than 2,100 of the cases. China also reported more than 200 imported cases.

Nine cross-province bus stations have halted operations in the city with destinations mainly to provinces including Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Shandong and Jiangxi, according to a statement on a local government website.

Shanghai will suspend all cross-province bus services from March 14th.

China has asked residents in the technology hub of Shenzhen to work from home and has closed non-essential venues in a southern Chinese city as the country braces for a nationwide Covid-19 resurgence.

The growing clusters spawned by the highly infectious omicron variant in China’s most developed large cities and economic powerhouses have turned into an unprecedented challenge for the country’s Covid Zero strategy, a policy abandoned by the rest of the world. — Bloomberg L.P.