Fri, Aug 19, 2022 page5

• Tourists stranded on Tibet highway as COVID-19 surges

  • Bloomberg
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  Hundreds of vehicles were stuck on a state highway in Tibet after neighboring Yunnan Province denied entry to people traveling from the COVID-19 hotspot, saying its quarantine system had reached capacity.

  Police in Tibet’s Markam County issued an urgent notice on Tuesday asking travelers to avoid leaving the region via a highway that leads to Yunnan, as well as another that goes to Sichuan.

  Quarantine rooms in areas across the provincial borders are full, and people were stranded on the road leading up to the checkpoint.

  The traffic jam began over the weekend after Deqin County in Yunnan tightened entry requirements due to cases spreading in Tibet. At its peak, there were several hundred cars and trucks that stretched 7km, although the situation has improved as more hotel rooms were made available, an official at the Deqin COVID-19 command center said without giving her name.

  Videos shared on social media showed that people had set up tents between cars and trucks, and were cooking meals on camping stoves. Travelers have had to endure hot summer temperatures, with some avoiding turning on air conditioners in their vehicles to conserve fuel, according to social media posts.

  The turmoil highlights concerns from officials that people returning from popular vacation destinations would seed further COVID-19 outbreaks across the country, as cases surge to a three-month high on outbreaks in holiday hotspots.

  Tibet’s flareup in particular has sparked alarm with the rural region, which is not as efficient at tracking the movement of infected people as better developed cities.

  Shanghai reported that a recent infection was in a boy that had returned from Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, prompting authorities to put 1,600 people into quarantine and test more than 84,000 people they deemed were at risk from exposure.

  The single infection sparked panic at an Ikea store in Shanghai when authorities locked it down after learning a close contact of the infected boy had visited.

  “As China’s key transportation hub, Shanghai is facing more pressure for preventing COVID rebound amid the summer holiday travel season,” Shanghai Municipal Health Commission Vice director Zhao Dandan (趙丹丹) said at a briefing on Wednesday, adding that officials are stepping up scrutiny of returnees.

  Qinghai — another province that neighbors Tibet — reported 60 COVID-19 cases for Wednesday, up from 15 a day ago, with cases detected in people coming from Tibet.

  Other provinces — including Fujian, Hubei, Zhejiang and Hunan — have also identified infections among people who have visited Tibet, according to a healthcare-focused social media account affiliated with state-run newspaper People’s Daily.

  China’s cases have climbed to the highest since early May, as outbreaks widen in vacation hotspots across the country.

  Authorities have again turned to the “Zero COVID” playbook of snap lockdowns and mandatory quarantine for close contacts and isolation of positive cases.

  The measures have stranded tens of thousands of tourists during peak season, and dimmed the outlook for the tourism sector, as taking a vacation turns into an increasingly risky gamble.

  There is no sign of the outbreaks easing. Tibet has recorded more than 3,500 local cases in the past 10 days, and several cities, including Lhasa, have gone into lockdown.

  Hainan reported more than 2,000 infections for Wednesday, while Xinjiang reported 271.
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