Authorities yesterday locked down a Chinese city bordering Myanmar, shutting most businesses and requiring residents to stay at home as a fresh outbreak of COVID-19 expanded.
Another 15 cases were yesterday found in Ruili within 24 hours, on top of six in the previous two days, health authorities in southwestern Yunnan Province said.
The lockdown shut down all businesses and public institutions except hospitals, pharmacies and essential shops like grocery stores, a notice posted online said.
Photo: AP
It affects the urban part of Ruili, which like most Chinese cities includes surrounding rural areas in its jurisdiction.
Authorities on Monday banned unnecessary travel in and out of the city, after the first cases were reported.
The latest cases were discovered during mass testing, also including Burmese living in city, which has an active cross-border trade.
Authorities said they would step up border controls.
Myanmar yesterday reported 3,602 new cases within 24 hours, state media said.
Elsewhere in China, 52 travelers who arrived on a flight from Afghanistan on Friday tested positive for the virus, the Hubei Health Commission said.
Thirty have been classified as confirmed cases, while the other 22 did not show any COVID-19 symptoms, it said.
China does not include asymptomatic cases in its official tally.
Beijing has regularly imported cases on travelers, but usually in smaller numbers.
The Xiamen Air flight flew from Kabul to Wuhan, the city hit hard by the virus after it was first detected there in late 2019.
Virtually all people arriving in China must quarantine for two weeks in designated hotels.
Authorities in April launched a campaign to vaccinate the entire population of Ruili following an outbreak in March.
China has relied on tough lockdowns and mass testing to tamp down outbreaks, even as it has accelerated vaccinations.
Central health officials have said they want to vaccinate 80 percent of the population.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
RSS