Exactly two years since the World Health Organization officially declared the then-rapidly spreading coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, and China has locked down a city of 9 million amid a spike in new COVID cases. Residents of the northeastern city of Changchun are required to remain home and undergo three rounds of mass testing, while non-essential businesses have been closed and transport links suspended, the Associated Press reported. China counted another 397 cases of local transmission on Friday, 98 of them in the province that surrounds Changchun.
The U.S. COVID numbers continue to decline, and the nation is now averaging 35,796 new cases a day, according to a New York Times tracker, down 51% from two weeks ago. The average daily number of hospitalizations stands at 32,017, down 44% from two weeks ago. Deaths are averaging 1,2,93 a day, down 31% from two weeks ago, but still an undesirably high number. Globally, there have been 453.5 million confirmed cases, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University, and 6.03 million deaths. The U.S. leads the world with 79.5 million cases and 965,466 fatalities.
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