Several Chinese cities yesterday went on high COVID-19 alert as the Lunar New Year holiday travel season began, requiring travelers to report their trips days before their arrival, as the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 reached more areas, including Beijing.
Authorities have warned the highly contagious Omicron variant adds to the increased risk of COVID-19 transmission as hundreds of millions of people travel around China ahead of Lunar New Year on Feb. 1.
Cities such as Luoyang and Jieyang on Sunday said that travelers would need to report their trips to communities, employers or hotels three days ahead of arrival.
Photo: AFP
The southwestern city of Yulin on Saturday said that those who want to enter should fill in an online form, including their health credentials and details of their trip, one day in advance.
Over the weekend, the capital Beijing and the southern technology hub Shenzhen each detected one domestically transmitted case of the Omicron variant.
The possibility that the person in Beijing was infected through imported goods could not be ruled out, Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention Deputy Director Pang Xinghuo (龐星火) said yesterday.
Beijing Municipal Health Commission Vice Director Li Ang (李昂) said that a local hospital had admitted nine people infected with the Omicron variant, with six still being treated.
He did not say when the people were admitted or why they had not been disclosed earlier.
The city of Meizhou, Guangdong Province, reported one Omicron infection linked to an outbreak in Zhuhai, state television said yesterday.
So far, at least five provinces and municipalities have reported domestic Omicron infections, while 14 provincial areas have found the variant among travelers arriving from overseas.
China is yet to show any solid sign of shifting its guideline of quickly containing any local infections, despite a high vaccination rate of 86.6 percent.
The strategy has taken on extra urgency in the buildup to the Winter Olympics, to be staged in Beijing and neighboring Hebei Province starting on Feb. 4.
Many local governments have already advised residents not to take unnecessary trips during the holiday, while dozens of international and domestic flights have been suspended.
China’s aviation regulator yesterday said that it would suspend two flights from the US over COVID-19 cases, bringing the total number of canceled flights from the nation so far this year to 76.
China reported 163 locally transmitted infections with confirmed symptoms on Sunday, official data showed yesterday, up from 65 a day earlier.
Sunday’s increase in infections was mainly driven by more cases in the cities of Tianjin and Anyang, where the Omicron variant has been found in local clusters.
Tianjin and Anyang have reported slightly more than 600 local symptomatic infections from the current outbreaks, with the authorities limiting movement within the cities and trips outside.
The images of a besuited Ferdinand Marcos Jr, clad in a top hat and leaning nonchalantly on a Rolls-Royce, dating from his time in Britain in the 1970s, are as you might expect from the playboy scion of a kleptocratic dictator. Yet as the Marcos family returns to power in the Philippines after a landslide presidential victory by Marcos Jr, he is facing calls to stop misrepresenting the circumstances of his studies at the University of Oxford. The university has confirmed that he did not complete his degree in philosophy, politics and economics after enrolling in 1975. “According to our records, he did
CALIBRATED RESPONSE: The city-state has learned from its past experiences of dealing with COVID-19 variants to assess the situation and the risks, the transport minister said Singapore will strive to keep its borders open and stay connected to the rest of world even if a new variant of COVID-19 emerges, Singaporean Minister for Transport S. Iswaran said on Wednesday. The city-state has learned from its past experiences of dealing with COVID-19 variants, Iswaran said in an interview with Bloomberg News. When the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 hit, Singapore did not backtrack on its reopening plans, but rather decided to wait and see how things panned out, he said, adding that the response was different versus the Delta outbreak. “We’ve all learned to adapt,” Iswaran said on the sidelines
Administrators at an elite Beijing university have backed down from plans to further tighten restrictions on students as part of China’s “zero COVID-19” strategy after a weekend protest at the school, students said on Tuesday. Graduate students at Peking University staged the protest on Sunday over the school’s decision to erect a sheet-metal wall to keep them further sequestered on campus, while allowing faculty to come and go freely. Discontent had already been simmering over regulations prohibiting them from ordering in food or having visitors, and daily COVID-19 testing. A citywide lockdown of Shanghai and expanded restrictions in Beijing in the past few
A former Australian envoy to the Solomon Islands has accused Australia’s government of losing the trust of South Pacific island countries and of ushering in greater Chinese influence. Retired career diplomat Trevor Sofield told a security summit yesterday that he found it “inconceivable” that the Solomon Islands government did not trust Australia enough to consult with it when a bilateral security pact with Beijing was first considered. “That would not have happened a few years ago,” said Sofield, who was Australian high commissioner to the Solomon Islands from 1982 to 1985. The pact, which was concluded last month, has been a major issue
RSS