Beijing kicks off mass testing after spike in Covid cases

APRIL 26: The Chaoyang district reported 26 cases over the weekend - the highest number so far in Beijing's latest surge. Long queues outside supermarkets and shops were seen despite government assurances there is sufficient food. It comes amid fears that Beijing could face a similar situation to Shanghai, which has seen some 25 million people shut in their homes for weeks. 'All the meat was snatched up' All 3.5 million residents in Chaoyang, Beijing's most populous district, will undergo three rounds of mass testing, according to a notice by the city's disease prevention team. The news prompted residents to rush to stock up essential supplies, with images circulating on local media showing supermarket shelves emptied of goods and snaking queues at check-out counters. Beijing's major supermarkets also extended their opening hours to accommodate the spike in demand. "Never thought I would go to the market early in the morning….when I got there, all the eggs and prawns were gone and all the meat was snatched up," said one Weibo user in Shanghai, before adding they managed to get some vegetables. Another Weibo user in Shanghai said: "Seeing people in Beijing rush to buy food is both funny and distressing… it's like looking at what my own life was like just last month." State-media news outlet The Global Times said that Beijing's fresh food companies have been ordered to increase the supply of groceries like meat, poultry eggs and vegetables. They also quoted health experts as saying that the results of the mass testing would indicate whether there is a need to escalate measures further, such as locking down several areas. Separately, Pang Xinghuo, deputy director of the Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control, told state-media outlet China Daily that the number of cases in Beijing is expected to increase in the following days. The latest outbreak in Shanghai, first detected in late March, has seen more than 400,000 cases recorded so far and 138 deaths. Some of the measures Chinese authorities have enforced include placing electronic door alarms to prevent those infected from leaving and forcibly evacuating people from their homes to carry out disinfection procedures. Some in locked-down areas of Shanghai say they have been struggling to access food supplies, and forced to wait for government drop-offs of vegetables, meat and eggs. Green barricades have also been erected overnight in parts of Shanghai without prior warning, effectively preventing residents from leaving their homes. In contrast to many other countries, China is pursuing a zero-Covid strategy with the aim of eradicating the virus from the country completely. While officials managed to keep infection levels relatively low at the beginning of the pandemic, later lockdowns have struggled to contain recent, more transmissible variants of the virus. How are other parts of China being affected? Outside Shanghai and Beijing, more than 20 cities, home to more than 30 million people, are under lockdown In some cities, such as Sanya in the south, people can only enter or leave with a negative Covid test less than 48 hours old, along with a green code on China's covid app Jiangsu province, where more than 80 million people live, closed 129 highway toll stations and 59 service centres for a period earlier this month The Ministry of Transport says 11 highway toll stations and 27 service centres remain closed across the country (down from 677 stations and 337 centres on 10 April)

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China Covid: Record number of cases as virus surges nationwide

NOV 24: China has recorded its highest number of daily Covid cases since the pandemic began, despite stringent measures designed to eliminate the virus. There are outbreaks in several major cities including the capital Beijing and southern trade hub Guangzhou. On Wednesday, the country recorded 31,527 cases - higher than the about 28,000 peak recorded in April, when its largest city Shanghai was locked down. It comes as strict lockdowns continue to spark episodes of unrest. China's zero-Covid policy has saved lives in the country of 1.4 billion people but also dealt a punishing blow to the economy and ordinary people's lives. However the rising wave of cases also comes weeks after the country slightly relaxed some of its Covid restrictions. It cut quarantine for close contacts from seven days in a state facility to five days and three days at home, and stopped recording secondary contacts which allowed many more people to avoid having to quarantine. Officials have also sought to avoid enforcing blanket lockdowns of the kind endured by Shanghai earlier this year. But faced with a renewed surge in cases in Beijing, as well as the first deaths from the virus in months, officials have already implemented some restrictions in several districts, with shops, schools and restaurants closed. The central city of Zhengzhou is also to enforce an effective lockdown for 6 million residents from Friday, officials announced. It follows violent protests at a vast industrial complex belonging to iPhone manufacturer Foxconn. The firm has apologised for a "technical error" in its payment systems. Other stories of suffering and desperation have also been shared online where they've fuelled public resentment. Last week, reports that a baby in Zhengzhou died because her medical care was delayed by Covid restrictions prompted huge outcry. China is the last major economy still pursuing a Covid eradication process with mass testing and lockdown rules. However virus cases are now being recorded in 31 provinces. President Xi Jinping has said strict curbs are needed to protect the country's large elderly population. Vaccination levels are lower than other developed nations, and only half of people aged over 80 have their primary vaccinations. While China is seeing an increase in infections now, the rate is still far lower than many other advanced economies at their pandemic peak. China's official death toll has remained low at just over 5,200 deaths since the pandemic began. That equates to three Covid deaths in every million in China, compared with 3,000 per million in the US and 2,400 per million in the UK. (with inputs from BBC)

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Covid in China: Million in lockdown in Wuhan after four cases

JULY 28: Jiangxia district residents have been ordered to stay inside their homes or compounds for three days after four asymptomatic Covid cases were detected. China follows a "zero Covid" strategy, including mass testing, strict isolation rules and local lockdowns. This has resulted in far fewer deaths than in many other countries. But the strategy is facing growing opposition as people and businesses continue to face the strain of restrictions. In Wuhan, a city of 12 million people, regular testing uncovered two asymptomatic cases two days ago. Two more cases were found through contact tracing, and shortly after the lockdown order was issued. Wuhan became known around the world in early 2020 as the first place scientists detected the new coronavirus - and the first city to be put under harsh restrictive measures. At the time, the wider world was shocked by the strict lockdown, but many cities and countries were soon forced to impose their own similar measures. Later, China became known as a Covid success story, with restrictions lifted much earlier than in many other countries. But that has changed again, with China pursuing a "zero Covid" strategy resulting in frequent local lockdowns, rather than trying to live with the virus as in most other countries. Last month, Shanghai - China's giant financial capital with nearly 25 million residents - finally emerged from a strict two-month lockdown, though residents are adapting to a "new normal" of frequent mass testing. A rising number of Chinese companies and factory production lines are maintaining a closed-loop system in order to follow the goal of completely eliminating Covid. In order to keep parts of the economy open, employees have been told to live temporarily in their workplaces to minimise contact between work and home. Earlier this week, scientists said there was "compelling evidence" that Wuhan's Huanan seafood and wildlife market was at the centre of the Covid outbreak. Two peer-reviewed studies re-examined information from the initial outbreak in the city. One of the studies shows that the earliest known cases were clustered around that market. The other uses genetic information to track the timing of the outbreak. It suggests there were two variants introduced into humans in November or early December 2019. Together, the researchers said this evidence suggests that the virus was present in live mammals that were sold at Huanan market in late 2019. They said it was transmitted to people who were working or shopping there in two separate "spill-over events", where a human contracted the virus from an animal. One of the researchers involved, virologist Prof David Robertson from the University of Glasgow, told BBC News that he hoped the studies would "correct the false record that the virus came from a lab". China has seen more than 2.2 million cases and 14,720 deaths since the pandemic began in 2019, according to America's Johns Hopkins University.

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Businesses shut as officials widen COVID-19 lockdowns in China

MARCH 15: Tens of millions of people across the country face restrictions, including the entire Jilin province and technology hub Shenzhen, as authorities report record numbers of cases. Toyota, Volkswagen and Apple supplier Foxconn are among the firms affected. The lockdowns have raised concerns that crucial supply chains may be disrupted. China on Tuesday reported a record high of more than 5,000 cases, most of it in Jilin. All 24 million residents of the north-eastern province were placed under quarantine orders on Monday. It is the first time China has restricted an entire province since the Wuhan and Hebei lockdown at the beginning of the pandemic. Jilin residents have been banned from moving around, and anyone wanting to leave the province must apply for police permission. It came a day after a five-day lockdown was placed on the 12.5 million residents of the southern city of Shenzhen, with all buses and subway services suspended. On Tuesday authorities in Langfang city which borders the capital Beijing, as well as Dongguan in the southern province of Guangdong, also imposed immediate lockdowns. Businesses in many of the affected regions have been told to close or have their employees work from home, unless they supplied essential services like food, utilities or other necessities. Foxconn, which manufactures iPhones for Apple, stopped its operations in Shenzhen on Monday, saying the date of resumption would "be advised by the local government". But it has several production sites in China and told the BBC it had "adjusted the production line to minimise the potential impact". Its plant in Zhengzhou - the world's largest iPhone factory - remains open, as the city was not hit by the restrictions. Toyota, which shut its factory in Changchun city in Jilin province, did not give a timeline for when business would resume. The Japanese carmaker told the BBC that the move was made to consider the "impact of supplier operation", and the "safety and security of employees and related parties". German carmaker Volkswagen also shuttered operations in Changchun, saying production of Volkswagen and Audi cars and their components were "affected", but that it hoped to reopen its factory on Thursday. On Tuesday the Shanghai Composite lost 5% and the Hang Seng index, where several Chinese technology giants are listed, fell over 6%. Analysts believe that firms would be able to manage the disruptions. "Such lockdowns have happened before, and (cities) have re-opened within a short period of time once the number of Covid cases were within control," Yeang Cheng Ling, senior investment strategist at Singapore's DBS Bank, told the BBC. UBS analyst Grace Chen said Shenzhen was not a "major" production site for suppliers, but it would be worrying if the lockdowns extended to Shanghai and surrounding areas as the region is a key manufacturing hub for notebooks, servers, and smart devices. It feels like China has gone backwards. Two years backwards. To the early days of the outbreak that first emerged here. Drastic measures are being imposed - again - on a large scale, to try to contain the virus. An entire province has been sealed off. The lockdown of Jilin is similar in so many ways to Hubei in early 2020; the area of China where it all began. Shenzhen, the globally important tech hub (where your iPad was most likely made) is also a city in lockdown. Shanghai - where I am writing this - home to 24 million people, is a nervous place. All schools are closed, children are learning online, increasingly people are working from home. Some compounds where people live are enforcing strict rules on who can come in. Deliveries are being sprayed with disinfectant again at the gates. It's all part of the on-going effort to maintain/retain/regain China's "dynamic zero-Covid" strategy. A goal that has been boosted by the mass roll-out of China's homemade vaccines. A goal that has been helped hugely by effectively shutting China's borders. But now a goal that is being significantly undermined by the Omicron variant. China has seen relatively fewer cases of Covid due to its strict zero-Covid policy, where it resorts to rapid lockdowns, mass testing and travel restrictions whenever clusters have emerged. However the rapid transmissibility of the Omicron variant has made sticking to that approach increasingly challenging. Since the start of the year, China has reported more domestically transmitted cases than in the entire 2021. Top Chinese infectious disease expert Zhang Wenhong has called the recent outbreaks "the most difficult period in the last two years of battling Covid" and that they were still in "the early stage of an exponential rise", in an online post widely circulated on social media. But he added that while it was necessary for China to maintain its zero Covid strategy to control the outbreaks for now, "this does not necessarily mean we will continue implementing the strategy of lockdowns and mass testing forever".

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