Wed, Oct 12, 2022 page5

• China steps up virus prevention measures

  • Reuters, BEIJING
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  Shanghai and other big Chinese cities, including Shenzhen, have ramped up testing for COVID-19 as infections rise, with some local authorities hastily closing schools, entertainment venues and tourist spots.

  Infections have risen to the highest since August, with the uptick coming after increased domestic travel during China’s seven-day National Day holiday earlier this month.

  Authorities reported 2,089 new local infections for Monday yesterday, the most since Aug. 20.

  

  A woman in Shanghai yesterday pets a dog through gaps in a barrier at a sealed area, following a COVID-19 outbreak.

  Photo: Reuters

  While many of the cases were found in tourist destinations, including scenic spots in the northern region of Inner Mongolia, megacities that are often the source of well-heeled and well-traveled tourists have started to report more cases this week.

  Shanghai, China’s financial capital of 25 million people, reported 28 local cases for Oct. 10, the fourth day of double-digit increases.

  Keen to avoid a reprise of the economically and psychically scarring lockdown in April and May, Shanghai said late on Monday that all of its 16 districts were to conduct routine testing at least twice a week until Nov. 10.

  That is a step up from once a week, a regime imposed after the last lockdown.

  Checks on inbound travelers and in places such as hotels should also be bolstered, authorities said.

  The expanding web of measures have already ensnared some.

  Peter Lee, a long-time British expatriate, was out at lunch with his wife and seven-year-old son last week when he was notified his apartment block was to be locked down for 48 hours.

  Lee and his son checked into a hotel, which was then also locked down due to a prior visit by a COVID-19 case.

  Lee’s wife, who was planning to join them, had no choice but returned home to be locked in, and then had her lockdown extended.

  Lee and his son are due to be released tomorrow, while Lee’s wife is not to be released until Sunday.

  “It might be that we say, we miss home and we miss mum too much and maybe we just go home and just deal with it, but we also lose another weekend then,” Lee said. “We’re monitoring the situation, because it seems like Shanghai is gradually shutting down anyway, and if everything starts to close then there won’t be much benefit in being able to come and go.”

  As of Monday, 36 Chinese cities were under various degrees of lockdown or control, affecting abotu 196.9 million people, versus 179.7 million in the previous week, Nomura Holdings said.

  In China’s southern tech hub of Shenzhen, where the highly transmissible Omicron BF.7 subvariant of SARS-CoV-2 has surfaced, local cases more than tripled to 33 on Monday from a day earlier.

  Inbound travelers are to be subject to three tests over three days, authorities in the city of 18 million people said yesterday.

  Despite China’s very small caseload versus the rest of the world, and the toll its counter-epidemic policies exact on the economy and population, the government has repeatedly urged people to accept the measures.

  “Once a large-scale rebound occurs, the epidemic will spread, and is bound to have a serious impact on economic and social development, and the final price will be higher and losses will be greater,” the state-controlled People’s Daily wrote in a commentary yesterday.

  The COVID-19 preventive steps come days ahead of a Chinese Communist Party National Congress starting on Sunday where Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is expected to extend his leadership.
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