The country is currently fighting its worst outbreak in 2 years, triggered by an increase in the highly transmissible Omicron variant.
Both deaths occurred in northeastern Jilin, bringing the country’s total coronavirus-related deaths to 4,638.
Jiao Yahui, a National Health Commission official, said that both deaths occurred in elderly patients due to their underlying conditions. She said that one of the victims had not been vaccinated against COVID-19.
Jilin was the location of most new 2,157 community transmissions on Saturday. People must obtain permission from the police before they can travel across border borders.
China has reported over 29,000 confirmed cases nationwide since March 1st.
It has continued to follow its tried and true policy of lockdownsand mass-testing of millions of people in a successful, but burdensome, “zero COVID” strategy since the outbreak in Wuhan in 2019.
Because clusters of the virus are being tamped down quickly, there have been relatively few cases in this country. This strategy has been popularly supported and prevented large numbers of deaths in other countries. Many of these countries have stopped any social distancing.
Officials have pledged to intensify their zero-tolerance strategy in order to stop multiple outbreaks across China, despite the worst virus surge since late 2019. However, Xi Jinping , the leader, acknowledged Thursday for the first times that China must seek “maximum impact” at a “minimal cost” to contain the virus.
Hong Kong saw 16583 new cases on Saturday, as it is currently facing the worst pandemic surge. On Friday, the city had more coronavirus cases than mainland China and has seen an increase in deaths.
COVID-19 data for Mainland China is separately counted from Hong Kong, a special administrative area.