On Monday, China recorded zero new domestic Covid cases for the first time in a month, a landmark for their “zero tolerance” policy. Since an airline cleanup crew in Nanjing improperly cleaned an incoming Russian airliner a month ago, China dealt with its worst outbreak of Covid since Wuhan in January-March, 2020. The new Delta virus caused 1,200 illnesses over the last month. At one point, six cases became critical and the country was at risk of their first Covid death since January – but all six recovered. And about a week ago, when three-quarters of the cities had been swept clean of the virus, the health authorities had confidently forecast that they could clean up the last one-quarter over the next couple of weeks.
There were about three dozen cases detected on Monday of people travelling into the country, but all were quarantined and are being cared for. Monday’s achievement was that there were no reported cases of anyone contracting the disease inside China. The mobilization of testing, tracking, quarantining, and providing the earliest possible medical care seems to have exposed the supposed invincibility of the virus.
