Beijing is tightening its hardline “zero COVID” rules, mandating that children show a negative test result to enter parks in China’s capital.
Children older than three will need to show a green health code on the system that controls people’s movements, as well as a negative COVID-19 result no older than 72 hours, a statement from the Beijing Municipal Administration Center of Parks said.
Previously, children were able to go to parks and other public places without getting their test results checked provided their parents met requirements for entry.
Photo: AP
China is relying on frequent testing to identify, then quash, transmission chains early even as its zero-tolerance approach comes under increasing strain from more transmissible variants and isolates it from the rest of the world.
While Beijing has contained its recent flare-up without a widespread lockdown, authorities in the city are under immense pressure to control the situation ahead of the party congress in the second half of the year, when Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is expected to secure an unprecedented third term as leader.
Getting a test is not particularly onerous and children have had to participate in previous rounds of mass testing. China is setting up tens of thousands of booths across the country, initially with a focus on major cities, to meet a pledge to ensure residents will always be just a 15-minute walk away from a swabbing point.
Still, the new rule was seen as extreme even by a population that has been subject to varying degrees of pandemic curbs. A hashtag linked to the story was one of the top five trending items on China’s Sina Weibo yesterday morning, with posters questioning how useful the policy will be.
For children wanting to play in parks, they will now need to swipe their national identification cards on a machine or have their health status checked via someone else’s phone.
Beijing’s most recent cluster was linked to a bar, and there has never been an infection linked to a park. More than 95 percent of Chinese children between three and 17 years old are now fully vaccinated, according to latest data.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant