Health workers register people for the Covid-19 vaccine innocence in the Chaoyang district of Beijing on January 15.
Photographer: Kevin Frayer / Getty Images
Photographer: Kevin Frayer / Getty Images
Beijing has imposed a lockout of 1.7 million people in part of the Chinese capital as officials try to prevent a revival of the Covid-19 in the northern region of the country in its main city.
Daxing District in southern Beijing, where its new airport is located, has been cut off from the rest of the country after six infections were found there. The total number of cases in Beijing stands at 15, while more than a thousand infections have been found nationwide since early January, mostly in the vast northern provinces of China.
Although the number of cases is small compared to outbreaks in Western countries, the boom – fueled by an unusually cold winter – is China’s biggest coronavirus challenge since the Wuhan crisis a year ago, as it has been possible to move to the capital of more than 20 million to distribute. people, China’s cultural and political center.
With the Chinese New Year holiday gone by for three weeks, officials are under pressure to stop the transmission of the virus before the period of mass travel through the country begins.
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Residents in five Daxing apartment complexes have been banned from leaving their homes since Wednesday, said the local government, while students in the district were told to stay home. A wide range of public spaces, including office buildings, hotels, restaurants, factories and supermarkets, were closed while the Daxing population underwent mass tests.
In addition, Beijing now requires anyone coming to the city from overseas to sit in solitary confinement for 21 days – first 14 days in a centralized facility and then seven days in their place of residence. They can then move around the city, but they are banned for another seven days for public gatherings.
The total of 28 days restriction for foreign arrivals is one of the strictest travel guidelines imposed in any major city.
The Daxing curbs are the first virus restrictions in Beijing since last summer, when a flare-up redirected to a seller of imported salmon grew to more than 300 cases.
“The family group case in Daxing has sounded the alarm that the epidemic is difficult and complicated,” Beijing municipal government spokesman Xu Hejian said at a news conference. Tuesday. “We can not prevent the import of cases and a domestic setback.”
– Assisted by John Liu and Claire Che