HNewsWire-Plandemic Turned Pestilence:

Everybody from automobile manufacturers to tablet makers around the world should be on the lookout: supplies of vital microchips and other high-tech components are about to grind to a halt once more as China locks down Shenzhen, known as the country's Silicon Valley, due to rising COVID numbers that are forcing a new round of lockdowns across China.

Shenzhen's 17.5 million citizens were put under lockdown on Sunday, with the lockdown set to run until March 20, according to Bloomberg. The number of statewide cases has more than quadrupled to 3,200, posing the newest danger to China's stock and bond markets. So much for Beijing's "COVID Zero" strategy (which authorities were reportedly on the brink of abandoning).

The current wide-ranging shutdown in Shenzhen is an escalation of previous limitations imposed on the city's economic area. Although cases are increasing across the country, the surge in infections is reportedly linked to the neighboring city of Hong Kong, where approximately 300,000 people are currently in isolation or under home quarantine, and where new infections are being recorded at a rate of roughly 10,000 per day.

China's current outbreak, at a time when the rest of the world has mostly moved on from the Wu-Flu pandemic, has morphed into a severe challenge to China's post-pandemic strategy. While the West is concentrated on reopening its economy, Chinese officials must now watch in dismay as some of their major cities are once again attacked by the virus.

So far, authorities have mainly avoided techniques like as lockdowns and mass testing, instead relying on tailored responses, only to watch omicron spread. They will conduct three rounds of mass testing on people in Shenzhen.

However, when seen in a broader context, Chinese officials seem to be dealing with a far larger issue.

In only a few weeks, China has scrambled to confront what has become its worst COVID epidemic in two years, reporting surging cases in a new wave that has seen the nation amend its zero-COVID policy by authorizing fast antigen testing for public use.

According to the National Health Commission and the SCMP, the number of newly registered cases surpassed 1,000 for the second day in a straight on Sunday, while the number of locally transmitted cases climbed to more over 3,200, the most since 2020, due to an increase in symptomatic illnesses.

During the epidemic, 16 provinces have reported new coronavirus infections, as have four megacities: Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing. However, one of the most concerning signals is that the number of local symptomatic cases has more than quadrupled to 1,807 from 476 the day before, according to the NHC. Asymptomatic infections increased to 1,315 from 1,048 the previous day.

Jilin, a city in the core of the new epidemic in China's northeast, has been largely closed down since Saturday, while residents of Yanji, a roughly 700,000-person metropolitan region bordering North Korea, were also confined to their homes on Sunday. Meanwhile, on the east coast, the financial center of Shanghai and the port city of Qingdao in Shandong province are also dealing with severe outbreaks. Across the nation, local governments are hurrying to construct temporary hospitals in the hopes of making thousands more beds accessible with each passing day.