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In a village near the Chinese city of Shijiazhuang, a man gives a saliva sample for a Covid-19 test
Photo: Jin Liangkuai / imago images / Xinhua
First one Chinese city under lockdown, then two, then many.
A metropolis of eleven million, Shijiazhuang in Hebei Province, tested twice within a few days.
Canceled flights, checkpoints on highways, hastily raised quarantine stations for thousands of people.
Most recently, calls for help from residents of the city of Tonghua, who are stuck in their homes and complaining on social media about a lack of food or insulin.
Since the beginning of January, news like this has been coming from China's northeast, suggesting that the pandemic is currently raging violently there - especially if you apply the German experience that corona measures are only tightened when they are actually already is too late.
In fact, the number of new infections in China has not been so high since the first wave subsided in spring 2020.
But when it comes to Covid-19, there is a much higher sensitivity in China: There, an alarm is triggered, which would be considered a victory message in Europe.
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