SHANGHAI, May 7 (Reuters) – The Chinese capital Beijing has launched a new round of mass tests for COVID-19 on Saturday and closed more bus routes and subway stations as it seeks to prevent the fate of Shanghai, where millions of people have been imprisoned for more. from a month.
The dragon movement has limited Shanghai, an economic and financial center, caused discontent among its 25 million people and sparked rare protests over issues such as access to food and medical care, loss of income and overcrowding, and unsanitary conditions in central quarantine centers.
While some people have been released for light and air in recent weeks, most say residents are still unable to leave their housing estates.
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Beijing is seeking to avoid an explosion in cases such as Shanghai, China’s largest city, by conducting rounds of mass tests, banning restaurants in many areas and closing more than 60 subway stations, about 15% of the network.
Cases in Shanghai have dwindled in eight days, and the city says its outbreak is under effective control, allowing it to close some of the makeshift hospitals it is vying to build as the number of cases increases.
But authorities also said full relief was still a long way off, warning against complacency to stick to China’s goal of zero COVID-19.
Emphasizing this expectation, authorities in Shanghai on Saturday postponed the city entrance exam “gaokao” by one month for the beginning of July. The last time this happened was in 2020, during the initial epidemic of coronavirus.
The city’s top Communist Party official, Li Qiang, a close ally of President Xi Jinping, told a cabinet meeting on Friday that “military orders are needed at all levels and more decisive and powerful action is needed to overcome of the great war and the great tests, “an official statement said.
The number of infections in Shanghai outside the blocked areas – a measure of whether the city could reopen – fell to 18 on Friday from the day before. The total number of new cases fell slightly to about 4,000, according to data released on Saturday.
Shanghai is also building thousands of permanent PCR testing stations, in line with other cities, as China seeks to make regular testing a daily necessity. Read more
People queue up to be tested on a mobile nucleic acid testing site amid the coronavirus disease epidemic (COVID-19) in Beijing, China, May 6, 2022. REUTERS / Carlos Garcia Rawlins
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China’s COVID policy is increasingly out of step with much of the rest of the world, where governments have eased restrictions or removed them altogether, in an attempt to live with COVID, even when infections are spreading.
But Chinese leaders this week reaffirmed their determination to fight the virus, threatening to crack down on critics of their austerity measures. Beyond Shanghai, dozens of cities have imposed full or partial blockades, releasing and tightening curbs at various times.
The measures impose increasing economic damage, which is causing complaints from global industrial groups and businesses at home.
The China Automobile Association estimated on Friday that sales fell 48 percent in April from a year earlier as zero COVID-19 policies closed factories, limited traffic to showrooms and put spending brakes on the world’s largest car market. . Read more
In Shanghai, although the government has provided guidance on how companies can restart operations, a survey of Japanese companies in late April found that most are still struggling to restart due to heavy demands. Read more
As of Friday, organizers have canceled, postponed or moved a list of major international sporting events to be held in China in the second half of the year, including the Asian Games scheduled for Hangzhou in September and the Diamond League Athletics Meetings originally scheduled for Shanghai on July 30 and Shenzhen on August 6. read more
The move, which followed a cabinet meeting on Thursday chaired by the C, which called for a doubling of the zero-COVID-19 approach, runs counter to the global sports calendar, which has largely returned to normal.
On Saturday, Beijing launched the first of three new rounds of daily testing in five districts, including the largest, Chaoyang, home embassies and large offices.
Representatives of Beijing said that although they understood the main chains of COVID transmission, they still believed that there were hidden sources of infection in society and that the city could not reduce its vigilance.
The capital reported 45 new symptomatic cases of COVID-19 on Friday, up from 55 a day earlier. He registered eight asymptomatic cases, which China counted separately, compared to 17 days earlier.
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Report by Brenda Goch; Edited by Stephen Coates and William Mallard
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