China blocks 11 million people near Beijing in an attempt to contain the coronavirus

Residents of Shijiazhuang, a provincial capital near Beijing, have been barred from leaving the city because major highways have been blocked, train and bus stations closed and flights canceled.
The blockade comes as a total of 117 Covid-19 infections – including 67 asymptomatic cases – were detected in Shijiazhuang on Wednesday. On Thursday, the city identified another 66 positive cases, according to the Hebei Provincial Health Commission.

As of Jan. 2, a total of 304 positive cases have been reported in Hebei – most of them in Shijiazhuang, official figures show. The city is located just 289.6 kilometers southwest of Beijing – about a three-hour drive or an hour on the high-speed rail.

At a news conference on Thursday, city officials announced a ban on outbound travel for all residents and vehicles in Shijiazhuang, except in emergencies.

In the city, meetings are banned, all schools have been suspended, and residential communities and villages are also closed.

The restrictions are some of the strictest imposed in China, as the country largely contained the spread of the coronavirus in March. They recall the draconian blockade during the initial outbreak in central Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first detected in December 2019.

The Shijiazhuang outbreak comes just weeks before the Lunar New Year celebration, China’s largest annual festival, which usually sees millions of people traveling home to reunite with their families.

Last year, the Chinese government abolished Wuhan two days before the Lunar New Year, but millions of people have already left the city, potentially carrying the virus with them to their hometowns across the country.

This year, fearing that New Year’s Eve travel could accelerate the spread of the virus again, a growing number of local governments have advised residents not to travel home for holidays, with civil servants and employees of state-owned companies ordered. to remain, unless they are special approval is given.

Strict measures

In Shejiazhuang, authorities said last week that the city was entering a “war mode” to combat the spread of the virus. A citywide coronavirus test was soon launched for all 11 million residents.

More than 3,000 health workers were deployed from other parts of the province to perform the mass test. At noon on Thursday, more than 6 million samples were collected and more than 2 million samples were tested, Vice Mayor Meng Xianghong told a news conference on Thursday. Mass testing identified 11 positive results for coronavirus, according to Meng.

On Thursday night, two medical teams – each with about 100 members – carrying test kits and other equipment were sent from eastern Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces to Shijiazhuang to support the effort.

In addition, a city hospital has been authorized and designated to treat patients with Covid-19, with three more hospitals standing, Meng said.

China is testing millions of people in Xinjiang for Covid-19 after an asymptomatic case was found

Rapid and drastic measures, such as mass testing, extensive contact tracking and strict blocking, have defined China’s response to sporadic local outbreaks.

In October last year, the eastern port city of Qingdao tested more than 10 million people in just four days, more than a dozen cases transmitted locally.

In late October, Kashgar Prefecture in the far western region of Xinjiang launched mass tests for nearly 5 million people and imposed blocking measures after a single asymptomatic case of coronavirus was reported.

Potential weak link

But this time, some public health experts in China said the recurrence of the virus in Shijiazhuang was detected too late, with rural areas being a weak link in preventing and controlling the epidemic.

Feng Zijian, deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told state broadcaster CCTV that the growing number of cases suggests the virus has “spread quietly for some time.”

The first confirmed case was detected on January 2 – a 61-year-old village woman on the outskirts of Shijiazhuang. In the following days, most new cases were detected in villages in the same district.

Lu Hongzhou, co-director of the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center at Fudan University, told the state-run Global Times that the Shijiazhuang outbreak shows that villages are a vulnerable link.

Epidemiological investigations by local health authorities have shown that many coronavirus patients who developed symptoms first went to local clinics that are not equipped to perform nucleic acid tests or provide appropriate treatment, according to Global Times.

As the virus spread in silence, the villagers continued to attend rallies. Local health authorities have found that many infections have been linked to funerals, weddings and other social gatherings, the report said.

According to the state-run Health Times, religious gatherings could have been attributed to the spread of the virus.

“Apart from the wedding banquets, some villagers also organized religious services at home every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, or at least twice a week, attended by dozens of people, mostly the elderly,” said a local official from the epicenter of Shijiazhuang outbreak village. quote saying.

These religious gatherings at home often operate in a legal gray area, separate from officially sanctioned church meetings. In recent years, Chinese authorities have cracked down on unsanctioned religious activities, closing prominent underground churches and closing pastors.

The CNN Beijing office assigned the report.

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