"Combatting the Omicron variant while maintaining normal operation of core functions in a megacity with a population of 25 million is a difficult task and a huge challenge," Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan said over the weekend while touring Shanghai amid its lockdowns. The number of new cases has been rapidly increasing, necessitating harsh measures to bring the outbreak under control quickly.

The outbreak in Shanghai is primarily the result of local authorities' refusal to implement more stringent measures earlier, allowing the situation to spiral out of control.

Sun's visit, as a member of the Communist Party of China Central Committee's Political Bureau, aimed to reassure the populace that "unwavering adherence to the dynamic Zero-COVID approach and mobilization of COVID-19 testing capacity, medical personnel, and COVID-19 prevention supplies to assist Shanghai in its fight against the epidemic" would be maintained.

It was also intended to allay fears expressed on Chinese social media following the death of a nurse suffering from an asthma exacerbation who was denied entry to a hospital. Additional concerns include the fact that the lockdowns were extended beyond what authorities had promised, as well as fears of food and supply access.

However, in keeping with President Xi Jinping's previous emphasis on minimizing disruptions to the economic infrastructure, Sun emphasized the importance of "key industries and institutions" operating under "strict closed-loop management" to ensure "the normal operation of core functions and the stability of supply and industrial chains."

A concept borrowed from the Tokyo Summer Olympics in 2021 and applied to the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022 allowed for the continuation of operations at some large-scale manufacturers with the ability to house workers in their compounds and act quickly in response to lockdown orders. According to Reuter's report last week, "GM, which said [on] Monday that it's Shanghai joint venture was operating normally, declined to comment on the factory's arrangements." A spokesperson for the company and its joint ventures stated that the company and its joint ventures had developed and implemented contingency plans with their suppliers to mitigate the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19. SAIC [China's state-owned automaker in a joint venture with General Motors] did not immediately respond to a request for comment."

Shanghai's two-phased lockdown was upgraded to a full-scale lockdown late Thursday night as new cases of COVID-19 were discovered, highlighting the community's silent uncontrolled spread over several weeks.

On Sunday, the People's Republic of China's National Health Commission reported 13,146 confirmed COVID-19 cases, of which 11,691 were asymptomatic. Over 100,000 infections were reported in March alone.

Yesterday's figures represent the highest single-day total in China since the COVID-19 pandemic began. The high number of asymptomatic cases has been attributed to the Omicron strain's characteristics and early detection through mass testing, a critical component of China's Zero-COVID strategy.

Zhang Boli, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and president of Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, explained that increased vaccination rates had boosted population immunity. According to health officials, over 3.27 billion doses of the COVID vaccine have been administered.

Nonetheless, those over the age of 80 and the most vulnerable in China are the least vaccinated. And a sizable proportion of those aged 60 and over have received only two doses. As was the case in Hong Kong, allowing the virus to spread with insufficient mitigation measures would have fatal consequences.

According to Wu Zunyou, a principal epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the large number of asymptomatic cases is a result of "our effective epidemic prevention work, which includes early detection of the epidemic, timely response, and comprehensive management of all infected people, including asymptomatic cases..." Wu acknowledged, however, that epidemic control will become more complicated if daily infections in the city continue to exceed 10,000 rapidly.

Resources are being mobilized to safeguard Shanghai's health system. Health care professionals from neighboring provinces are being mobilized to assist with mass testing and the construction of makeshift hospitals to manage asymptomatic infections. Additionally, volunteers working around the clock are distributing food and necessities to the population.

According to the Shanghai Health Commission, the city has launched a citywide COVID-19 antigen self-testing campaign to identify early cases based on self-reporting. This will be followed by citywide nucleic acid testing on Monday (PCR). Since March 28, 2022, when the phased lockdown began, 32.74 million PCR tests have been conducted in the city. A sample collection site has been established for every 3,000 residents as part of this monumental undertaking, with samples arriving at testing institutes approximately once every hour.

Rather than recognizing the complex network of operations that had to be mobilized quickly to ensure that millions of people were protected from infection and the virus could be suppressed and eliminated, the Western mainstream media's primary objective is to exploit the chaotic nature of these developments and malign these efforts in the realm of public opinion.

The New York Times has chosen to highlight the separation of some children from their parents during the lockdown and mass testing, which sparked outrage and frustration on Chinese social media.

They wrote, "A series of hospital cribs, each holding several small children, appeared to be parked in the hallway of the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center in the city's Jinshan District in the images [photos and videos]. Several of the children were seen crying on video." The health center acknowledged the authenticity of these images. And indeed, these are cause for concern. However, in light of the outbreak and its dangers to the population, it is self-serving of the New York Times to use this to discredit the enormous effort made in Shanghai to combat the Omicron variant. American liberalism's leading press has repeatedly published demands for living with the virus.

Meanwhile, over the last two years, 243,000 children in the United States have lost a caregiver to COVID-19. One hundred ninety-four thousand of these children were orphaned by both parents. According to Scientific American, "the psychological and economic aftershocks can have a negative impact on their education and career for the rest of their lives." Meanwhile, as the BA.2 outbreak gains momentum, more than 700 people die each day in the United States from COVID-19. Almost 1,500 children have been killed in the United States throughout the pandemic, two-thirds of them in the last eight months due to the bipartisan policy of keeping schools open during repeated waves of infection.

Meanwhile, the Chinese CDC reported that a novel strain of the virus was isolated from a patient with mild COVID-19 symptoms in Suzhou, about 43 miles from Shanghai. Bloomberg reports that it appears to have evolved from the Omicron variant's BA.1.1 branch.

Despite the strict measures, China's dynamic Zero-COVID strategy continues to be popular. The global experience with COVID-19, particularly in the United States, where it has killed over a million people, has not escaped the population. Dr. Q, a cardiologist in Shenyang, acknowledged that living with the virus would result in the death of well over a million people in China. "And I would be the first to catch it and bring it to my mother, who is over 70 years old and I'm afraid for her safety."