BEIJING: Chinese health officials said on Friday they were bringing the country’s worst Covid outbreak in months under control after new infections hit a seven-month high earlier this week.

Multiple cluster outbreaks of the highly contagious Delta variant have spread to 48 cities in 18 provinces nationwide, infecting more than 1,282 people, officials said.

However, there had been no new infections in many hotspots in recent days owing to stringent virus control measures, they added. “Of these 48 cities, 36 have not reported any new infections in the past five consecutive days,” Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention official He Qinghua told reporters.

“In these circumstances, the risk of a nationwide outbreak is generally controllable and there is relatively little risk of a large-scale outbreak occurring on the national scale.” State media has described the current outbreak -- which has sparked local lockdowns, mass testing and travel restrictions — as the most severe since the virus first emerged in the central city of Wuhan.

More than half of China’s population, 777 million people, have been fully inoculated so far.

Published in Dawn, August 14th, 2021