As China reports a surge in new cases of Wuhan coronavirus, the Communist country has reintroduced lockdown measures in the capital Beijing and other major cities. “More than 253,000 coronavirus cases have been found in China in the past three weeks and the daily average is rising, the government said Tuesday,” The Associated Press reported.
Beijing is under semi-lockdown, with school kids turning to online classes. “Schools in Beijing have switched to online teaching and residents of several districts have been asked to limit their movements as the city’s Covid-19 cases soar and new virus-related deaths add to the city’s pandemic toll,” the Hong Kong daily South China Morning Post wrote.
Besides the city of Beijing, Shanghai, a key Chinese commercial center, and Guangzhou, the country’s main export and transit hub, have been put under strict restrictions in keeping with the Communist regime’s “zero-COVID” policy.
“Beijing shut parks and museums on Tuesday and Shanghai tightened rules for people entering the city as Chinese authorities grapple with a spike in COVID-19 cases that has deepened concern about the economy and dimmed hopes for a quick reopening,” Reuters reported Tuesday.
China’s “central government is telling local authorities to impose strict lockdowns in their areas when they detect a Covid-19 outbreak – even if only a handful of cases are found,” the BBC confirmed Tuesday. “It is one of the toughest anti-Covid regimes in the world and lockdowns last until no new infections are reported,” the broadcaster added.
The South China Morning Post reported the lockdown measures in Beijing:
Schools in Beijing have switched to online teaching and residents of several districts have been asked to limit their movements as the city’s Covid-19 cases soar and new virus-related deaths add to the city’s pandemic toll.Officials in Haidian district said schoolchildren would have one week of online learning from Monday and that regular testing would be conducted in the district. Other districts, such as Xicheng, Dongcheng and Fengtai, gave notice of remote teaching.The city authorities also said that starting from Tuesday, anyone arriving in the city will have to take three PCR tests over three consecutive days.Covid-19 outbreaks are rapidly expanding in the capital, with 962 infections reported on Monday, including 266 detected during community screening, suggesting authorities are struggling to contain the outbreaks. The case numbers have more than doubled since a week ago, when 407 infections were reported.A spokesman for the Beijing government, Xu Hejian, said on Sunday the situation for epidemic prevention and control “is grim”. (…)Several districts, including Tongzhou, Fengtai, Xicheng, Dongcheng, Shunyi and Yanqing, issued letters to residents, calling on them to stay at home to minimise the risk of spreading the virus. Residents were also advised to only travel between home and work, and not venture to other districts.Some office buildings in Chaoyang, a district with a population of 3.45 million and the worst hit in the current Covid-19 wave, have capped the number of employees allowed into their offices. One notice in the central business district set a limit as low as 5 per cent. (…)Beijing residents said they had found that the most recent lockdown and other restrictions came swiftly and quietly. Some were told by their residential compounds overnight that they were in lockdown.
Cities across China are clamping down on social and economic activities. “People stuck inside are allowed to leave their homes to buy food and get tested, but all other shops are closed, as are schools and offices,” the UK-based TV channel Sky News reported.
Given China’s track record of concealing the true extent of the pandemic, the actual numbers could be much higher. As The AP News recently noted: “With a population of 1.4 billion, China has officially reported just 286,197 cases since the virus was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. That compares to 98.3 million cases and 1 million deaths for the U.S., with its population of 331.9 million, since the virus first appeared there in 2020.”
Since the Wuhan virus first surfaced almost three years ago in the central Chinese province of Hubei, the Communist regime has spared no effort in covering up its origins and the spread of the contagion.
China’s “zero-COVID” policy, which seeks to stop the spread of the virus by aggressive lockdown measures, triggered rare protests in Guangzhou and other Chinese cities, media reports say.
“The deaths come amid rare protests over China’s zero-Covid policy,” the BBC noted Monday. “Crowds of residents in southern China’s industrial metropolis Guangzhou have escaped a compulsory lockdown and clashed with police, as anger at strict coronavirus curbs boiled over,” the broadcaster reported earlier this week.
As Europe and the West struggles with the recession in the wake of Russia’s war on Ukraine, China’s lockdown measures are pushing the world into a deeper economic crisis. “Covid control restrictions now weigh on a fifth of China’s economy as infections continue their upward march, defying the central government’s call for more targeted, less disruptive Covid Zero measures,” the Bloomberg News noted Tuesday.
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