China set out urgent plans to protect rural communities from COVID-19 yesterday, as millions of city-dwellers planned holidays for the first time in years after Beijing abandoned its stringent system of lockdowns and travel curbs.
There is particular concern about China’s hinterland in the run up to China’s Lunar New Year holiday starting on Jan. 22.
Rural areas are likely to be inundated with travelers returning to their hometowns and villages, which have had little exposure to the virus during the three years since the pandemic started.
Photo: AFP
The Chinese National Health Commission yesterday said it was ramping up vaccinations and building stocks of ventilators, essential drugs and test kits in rural areas. It also advised travelers to reduce contact with elderly relatives.
China’s international borders remain largely shut, but recent decisions to abandon testing prior to domestic travel and disable apps that tracked people’s journey history have allowed people to move around the country.
One of China’s most populous provinces, Henan, canceled all holidays for healthcare staff until the end of March to ensure “a smooth transition” as COVID-19 restrictions ease, state media reported on Thursday.
Multiple cities across the country of 1.4 billion people opened new vaccination sites to encourage the public to take booster shots, the state-run Global Times newspaper reported.
“Go all out” was the message from China’s state asset regulator in a statement late on Thursday that urged government-owned drugmakers to ensure supplies of medicines related to COVID-19 would meet “the rapid increase” in demand.
SF Express, one of China’s largest courier services, said on its official WeChat account that it had sent workers from across the country to keep deliveries going in Beijing amid staff shortages and soaring demand.
It had started a “fast track” for emergency shipments such as medicines and daily necessities, with demand in the capital 300 percent above normal levels, it said.
The COVID-19 scare in China also led people in Hong Kong, Macau and in some neighborhoods in Australia to search for fever medicines and test kits for family and friends in China.
Many Chinese are resigned to catching the virus at some point.
“Everyone will get it, I guess,” a 29-year-old Beijing resident surnamed Du said.
Analysts said that China could pay a price for letting the virus rapidly rip through a population that lacks “herd immunity” and has low vaccination rates among the elderly.
That has dented the prospects for near-term growth, even if the opening up should eventually help revive China’s battered economy, they said.
JPMorgan yesterday revised down its expectations for China’s growth this year to 2.8 percent, which is well below China’s official target of 5.5 percent, and would mark one of China’s worst performances in about half a century.
“Arduous efforts” are needed to sustain the recovery in growth due to an adverse external environment and the global economy’s loss of momentum, the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission said.
JUMPING BAIL: The democracy advocate said made the decision after ‘considering the situation in Hong Kong, my personal safety, my physical and mental health’ Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Agnes Chow (周庭), who was jailed over her role in massive 2019 protests, on Sunday said she had moved to Canada and would not return to meet her bail conditions. Chow was one of the best-known young faces of the 2012, 2014 and 2019 protest movements against Beijing’s increasingly authoritarian rule in Hong Kong. She spent about seven months behind bars for her role in a protest outside Hong Kong police headquarters in 2019, when huge crowds rallied week after week in the most serious challenge to China’s rule since Hong Kong’s 1997 handover. On Sunday
ELECTION INTERFERENCE: Meta did not publicly link the account network to the Chinese government, but said it is based in China and sought to inflate divisions within the US Someone in China created thousands of fake social media accounts designed to appear to be from Americans and used them to spread polarizing political content in an apparent effort to divide the US ahead of next year’s presidential elections, Meta said on Thursday. The network of about 4,800 fake accounts was attempting to build an audience when it was identified and eliminated by the tech company, which owns Facebook and Instagram. The accounts sported fake photos, names and locations as a way to appear like everyday American Facebook users weighing in on political issues. Instead of spreading fake content as other networks
ON THE MOVE: Pictures posted online showed residents of one town fleeing on foot and vehicles toward higher ground after a tsunami warning was issued A powerful earthquake that shook the southern Philippines killed at least one villager and injured several others as thousands scrambled out of their homes in panic and jammed roads to higher ground after a tsunami warning was issued, officials said yesterday. The US Geological Survey reported that the magnitude 7.6 quake on Saturday night struck at a depth of 32km, while the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said it expected tsunamis to hit the southern Philippines and parts of Indonesia, Palau and Malaysia, but later dropped that warning. In Japan, authorities issued evacuation orders late on Saturday in various parts of Okinawa Prefecture,
A person known to the French authorities as a radical Islamist with mental health troubles on Saturday stabbed a German tourist to death and wounded two people in central Paris before being arrested, officials said. The attack took place close to the Eiffel Tower during a busy weekend night and came with the country on its highest alert for attacks as tensions rise against the background of the war between Israel and Hamas. “We will not give in to terrorism,” French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne wrote on X, formerly Twitter, after the attack. French President Emmanuel Macron said he was sending his condolences