Health workers are registering people for the inoculation of the Covid-19 vaccine in Beijing’s Chaoyang District on January 15th.
Photographer: Kevin Frayer / Getty Images
Photographer: Kevin Frayer / Getty Images
Beijing has imposed a blockade on 1.7 million people in part of the Chinese capital, as officials struggle to prevent the revival of Covid-19 in the country’s northern region from infiltrating its most important city.
Daxing District in southern Beijing, where its new airport is located, has been closed to the rest of the country after six infections were found there. The total number of cases in Beijing is 15, while more than a thousand infections have been detected nationwide since early January, especially in the vast rural provinces of northern China.
While the number of cases is small compared to outbreaks in Western countries, the outbreak – fueled by an unusually cold winter – is the biggest challenge for China’s coronavirus since the Wuhan crisis a year ago, given its potential. spread in the capital of more than 20 million people, the cultural and political center of China.
With the Chinese New Year holiday, three weeks away, officials are under pressure to stop transmitting the virus before the start of the mass travel period.
The Covid blockades spread a year after China shocked the world
Residents of five apartment complexes in Daxing have been barred from leaving their homes on Wednesday. said the local government, while students in the district were told to stay home. A wide range of public locations, including office buildings, hotels, restaurants, factories and supermarkets have been closed while the population of Daxing is undergoing mass testing.
In addition, Beijing now requires anyone coming to the city from abroad to be quarantined in isolation for 21 days – first at a centralized facility for 14 days and then at their residence for seven days. They can then travel around the city, but are forbidden to hold any public assembly for another seven days.
The total 28-day restriction on foreign arrivals is among the toughest travel guidelines imposed in any major city.
Daxing borders are the first virus restrictions in Beijing last summer, when an explosion that was followed by a seller of imported salmon rose to more than 300 cases.
“The cases of family groups in Daxing have sounded the alarm that the epidemic situation is harsh and complex,” Xu Hejian, a spokesman for the Beijing municipal government, told a news conference on Tuesday. “We cannot relax on the prevention of imported cases and on domestic recovery.”
– With the assistance of John Liu and Claire Che