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Coronavirus China
ChinaScience

Xi Jinping tells officials ‘persistence is victory’ as China battles Covid outbreak

  • President calls for efforts to swiftly contain latest wave of infections and to overcome wariness and complacency
  • Daily case numbers have dipped in the last two days but expert says it’s too early to tell if the situation is easing

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China is battling its worst outbreak of locally transmitted cases since the start of the pandemic. Photo: Xinhua
Zhuang PinghuiandHolly Chik
President Xi Jinping has called on officials to make Covid-19 control their top priority and to swiftly contain an outbreak that has now spread to most parts of China.
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Xi also said China would stick to a strategy to “prevent Covid-19 being introduced from overseas and causing local transmission” – or zero-Covid – in a meeting of the Politburo, the Communist Party’s top decision-making body, on Thursday.

The president called for efforts to overcome wariness and complacency, as the country enters a third year of tough coronavirus restrictions while much of the world has opened up.

“In places with a serious epidemic situation, the main leaders of the party and the government should take epidemic control work as their first priority,” Xi told the meeting, according to state news agency Xinhua.

“Supervision and accountability will be strengthened. Those whose dereliction of duty leads to the epidemic getting out of control will be immediately investigated and severely punished.”

It comes as China is battling its worst outbreak of locally transmitted cases since the start of the pandemic, with millions of people in lockdown as the highly transmissible Omicron variant spreads. Daily case numbers have been steadily climbing since the start of March and topped 5,000 local infections on Tuesday – the highest number since the initial Wuhan outbreak.

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