China reported 71 confirmed local COVID-19 infections on Monday, as health authorities mentioned a possible change to the country’s COVID-zero strategy. The cases occurred across eight provinces and province-level regions spanning the length and width of the country, including the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Jiangsu, Liaoning, Yunnan, and Guangdong.

Wu Liangyou, deputy director of the disease control bureau of the National Health Commission, said at a press conference Saturday that the disease is still spreading locally following the Spring Festival holiday.

Wu Zunyou, the chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a conference last Tuesday he was cautiously optimistic that the pandemic will end this year.

He said that Chinese health authorities are studying a move away from the zero-tolerance approach that has largely prevented the disease’s spread at the cost of cutting off most international travel. Several teams are studying how to improve China’s existing prevention and control measures, the medical expert said, developing an approach that is neither the current “zero cases” policy nor laissez-faire. The new approach will control the pandemic and put “people first and life first,” while also integrating with the international community to resume normal international exchanges and economic development, Wu said.

At the Saturday press conference, Wu Liangyou gave updates on the control of the outbreaks currently in progress around China. Gene sequencing of the cases in the northern city of Hohhot, Inner Mongolia have shown they are caused by the Delta variant and started from an “overseas import source,” Wu said. He provided no further information about the source of the outbreak. He added that the outbreak is still at an early stage with the number of cases growing rapidly, driven in part by clusters in densely crowded places like offices and wedding banquets.

Liaoning province in northeast China has largely brought under control the risk of social transmission of the new outbreak, Wu said. Local authorities in Heilongjiang, another northeastern province, are carrying out further tracing and case investigation after identifying multiple transmission chains, according to Wu.

The Omicron-related infections in the southern city of Shenzhen have been “basically controlled,” Wu said, while the source of successive outbreaks in southwestern Yunnan province is still unclear.

Ten new confirmed highly infectious Omicron cases were reported in Suzhou, Jiangsu province Monday. Nucleic acid screening is being expanded to reduce the risk of pandemic spread, Wu said.

None of the current outbreaks is associated with a large-scale lockdown.

Editor: David Cohen.

(Header image: Residents line up to receive COVID-19 test in Huhhot, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Feb. 17, 2022. IC)