China running out of cash to finance COVID-19 vaccines

The Chinese local governments are faced with a new challenge in the fight against COVID: they are running out of cash needed to finance mass testing and enforce quarantine, CNN reported on Friday. The zero-COVID policy kept China out of recession in 2020, but now bills are mounting, placing financial strain on municipal authorities across the world's most populous nation, according to CNN. The daily average for hospitalizations went up 21% on Thursday from two weeks ago to 49,070, while the daily average for deaths was up 3% to 274, according to a New York Times tracker. The death toll is above 6.63 million with the US leading the world with 98.9 million cases and 1,081, 147 deaths according to data collected by Johns Hopkins.