Skift Take
China’s zero-Covid efforts may will pass the wayside, especially with the Winter season Olympics just over two weeks away.
Lebawit Lily Girma
Beijing will need visitors to get a COVID-19 test within 72 hours of arrival in the Chinese capital, state media announced on Sunday, a day after the city reported its first Omicron case and as it readies to stage the Winter season Olympics next month.
On Saturday, the city reported the very first local infection of the extremely transmissible Omicron version, involving a person who had visited numerous shopping centers and restaurants in the previous 2 week. The person had not left the city considering that the start of this year.
The brand-new rule, efficient from Jan. 22 to end-March, is intended to assist with early detection of Omicron, which is rising globally, and the control of epidemic threats, Beijing Daily, a government paper, stated on its authorities social media account.
Currently, the capital city needs inbound visitors to take a COVID-19 test within 2 days of departure for the city and have a green code on the city’s health tracking app.
The city and neighbouring Hebei province will host the Olympics, which start on Feb. 4, inside a “closed loop” separating professional athletes and other Games personnel from the public.
In Tianjin, a neighbouring city with close economic ties with the capital that fighting a COVID-19 outbreak including Omicron variant, the city discovered 59 COVID-19 cases in its third round of mass screening starting on Saturday, He Peng, a local government spokesperson, told a press conference on Sunday.
So far, local cases of the Omicron variant have been identified in at least 5 provinces and municipalities, triggering cities to impose curbs to stop its spread and threatening to further undercut slowing financial growth.
China has actually not stated how many Omicron cases it has found in total.
“It is too soon to conclude that Omicron will swamp China’s efforts to reduce COVID,” stated Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics, in a note issued on Friday.
“But it is clear that the introduction of more transmissible variations is needing more regular interventions … And the financial toll from this vigilance is installing.”
About 13,000 people have been tested for COVID-19 in the Haidian district where the Beijing case was found, but none of the results came back favorable, Beijing Daily pointed out official information as saying on Sunday.
However, some religious websites in the city were currently being closed to visitors as a precautionary measure. Lama Temple, a Tibetan Buddhist abbey in central Beijing, stated on Sunday it was closing down for an unspecified period due to COVID-19 epidemic and control procedures.
Some Beijing citizens, concerned about being caught in the city for the upcoming week-long Lunar New Year holiday, were hurrying to travel back home early since of the Omicron case.
“It’s stressing that the source of the infection in Beijing remains unclear,” said Shelly Fong, who decided to take a trip back to her home in Liaoning province on Monday. “If there’s a break out in Beijing, I will not be able to return home.”
“What if there’s no flights? What if there’s a lockdown in Beijing? These are genuine possibilities.”
Outdoors Beijing Relationship Hospital on Sunday, lines for getting a COVID-19 test left people waiting in line for hours in frigid temperatures.
Mainland China reported 119 new confirmed COVID-19 cases for Jan. 15, including imported infections, down from 165 a day previously, according to National Health Commission (NHC) information on Sunday.
The brand-new locally sent cases remained in Tianjin, Henan, Beijing, Guangdong and Shaanxi, NHC stated.
There were no brand-new deaths, leaving the death toll at 4,636.
As of Jan. 15, mainland China had 104,864 verified cases.
(Reporting by Stella Qiu, Yew Lun Tian and Tony Munroe; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and Raissa Kasolowsky)
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