Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Bracing for a fresh and widespread outbreak of Covid-19, China has decided to reimpose lockdowns as the nation, suspected as the nursery of the 2020 pandemic, has recorded over 100 cases of Delta variant infections across 11 provinces over the last week, potentially jeopardizing the Winter Olympics scheduled for February 2022.
“Since October 17, there have been multiple scattered local outbreaks in China, and they are expanding rapidly,” Mi Feng, a spokesperson at the National Health Commission (NHC), said at a news conference Sunday, the media reported.
“There is an increasing risk that the outbreak will spread even further,” reported CNN.
The rapid spread comes despite about 75 per cent of China’s population — of more than a billion people — being fully vaccinated, Mi said.
Last week, the authorities had already banned many flights, cancelled tour programmes, and shut down educational institutions in different areas following a zero-Covid policy in regions reporting fresh infections.
The recent outbreak was first detected on October 16 among a tour group of fully vaccinated senior citizens from Shanghai who travelled in several northern regions. Among the 133 infections reported as of Sunday, 106 were linked to 13 tour groups, Mi added.
They have reported infections in nearly a third of the country’s provinces and regions, with all medium- and high-risk regions concentrated in Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Ningxia, Guizhou, and Beijing.
On Sunday, Beijing tightened entry restrictions into the city, requiring travellers from places with confirmed cases to present a negative coronavirus test and undergo 14 days of quarantined health monitoring. The city has recorded 14 confirmed cases in the latest outbreak, including 12 over the past three days.
China has put Lanzhou, a city of four million people, under a strict lockdown and directed its citizens to not leave their residences unless it’s an emergency.
The decision came after the area recorded 29 recent cases, with 6 of them being reported by Lanzhou. They announced the lockdown restrictions in Lanzhou on Tuesday, a day after the fresh cases came.
On Monday, Beijing put thousands of people in northern China under strict restrictions. China reported 39 fresh cases on Monday, bringing the tally from the latest Delta variant-linked outbreak to over 100 cases over the past week.
They have locked several housing blocks in Beijing down, and organisers on Sunday indefinitely postponed a marathon at which 30,000 runners were expected.
Some 23,000 residents in one housing compound in Changping district have been ordered to stay indoors after they found there nine cases in recent days. Photos showed officials in hazmat suits standing watch outside the entrances to each apartment block and the perimeter of the compound blocked by metal barricades.
Entry will be restricted for people who have been to places with local Covid-19 infections in the last 14 days, according to media reports.
In the central city of Wuhan — where the coronavirus was first identified in late 2019 — organisers abruptly cancelled another marathon Sunday that was expected to draw 26,000 participants.