When a handful of new cases of coronavirus occurred in a province around Beijing – apparently spreading at a wedding party in the town, Chinese authorities took action.
They locked up two cities with more than 17 million people, Shijiazhuang and Xingtai. They ordered a crash test regime from almost every resident there, which was completed within days.
They stopped transportation and canceled weddings, funerals and, especially the provincial Communist Party conference.
By this week, the exclusions had extended to another city on the outskirts of Beijing, Langfang, as well as a province in Heilongjiang, a northeastern province. Districts in Beijing itself, the Chinese capital, have also closed.
A total of more than 22 million people have been ordered to stay inside their homes – double the number affected last January when China’s central government shut down Wuhan, the central city where the virus was first reported, in a move which was then considered extraordinary.
The upswing remains small compared to the devastation facing other countries, but they threaten to undermine the country’s Communist Party’s success in submitting the virus so that the economy can rebound after the slump of last year and that the people can return to something close again. to normal lives.
The urgency of the government’s current response contrasts with that of officials in Wuhan last year, who feared a setback when they unveiled the mysterious new diseases that then emerged. Local officials there have continued a Communist Party conference such as the one now canceled in Hebei, despite knowing the risk of the disease spreading among people.
Since Wuhan, authorities have created a playbook that mobilizes party cadres to respond quickly to new outbreaks by shutting down neighborhoods, conducting widespread testing, and placing large groups in quarantine if necessary.
“In the process of preventing and combating infectious diseases, one of the most important points is to seek truth from facts, to release epidemic information openly and transparently and to never allow cover-ups or under-reporting,” the Chinese said. Prime Minister Li Keqiang said on Friday meeting of the State Council, China’s cabinet.
According to a database of the New York Times, China, a country of 1.4 billion people, reported an average of 109 new cases per day over the past week. These are welcome numbers in countries experiencing much worse – including the United States, which averages more than 250,000 new cases a day – but it is the worst in China since last summer.
The National Health Commission in China has not reported any new deaths, but the World Health Organization, which uses information from China, has so far recorded 1221 people in 2021. The National Health Commission did not respond to requests to explain the difference.
In Hebei, the province where the new outbreak is concentrated, officials declared a ‘wartime’ last week showing no sign of suspension.
During the pandemic, officials were particularly concerned about Beijing, home to the central leadership of the Communist Party. Last week, Hebei party secretary Wang Dongfeng pledged to make sure the province is a moat to protect Beijing’s political security. ‘
The outbreaks, which last so long with minimal cases, have increased anxiety in China, where residents mostly feel that the pandemic is a thing of the past.
New cases have also been reported in the northern provinces of Shanxi and the northeastern provinces of Heilongjiang and Jilin. Shanghai on Wednesday appealed to residents not to leave the city and announced that people traveling to risky areas had to quarantine at home for two weeks and only had to leave after passing two tests, while those traveling to the areas with the greatest risk traveled, in the quarantine in government facilities.
In Wuhan, rumors are swirling that the city may experience a new exclusion; although it seemed unfounded, officials have sharply tightened temperature controls in some streets.
In Shunyi, a district in northeastern Beijing that includes Beijing Capital International Airport as well as rural towns, residents have been ordered to stay indoors since a surge of cases just before the new year. At Beijing’s main railway stations, workers sprayed public spaces with disinfectant.
After a taxi driver tested positive in Beijing over the weekend, authorities tracked down 144 passengers for additional tests, according to The Global Times, a state newspaper. Now someone getting a taxi or car service in Beijing needs to scan a QR code from their phone so the government can quickly locate it.
The government has continued plans to vaccinate 50 million people before the new New Year next month, a holiday when hundreds of millions of people traditionally cross the country to visit their families. By Wednesday, more than ten million doses had been distributed.
Even with the vaccinations, officials have already warned people not to travel before the holidays.
“If these measures are properly implemented, it can ensure that no large-scale epidemic rebound occurs,” Feng Zijian, the deputy director of China’s Centers for Disease Control, said during a briefing in Beijing on Wednesday.
Although millions have inconvenienced the new restrictions, it appears that there is no significant public resistance to them.
“As for me, I think measures like a closure for the whole city are actually pretty good,” said Zhao Zhengyu, a university student in Beijing, who is now confined to her parents’ home in Shijiazhuang, where she visited during a visit. wash. winter holiday when the outbreak broke out there.
Many in the city were afraid of a repeat of Wuhan’s closing, but she sounded intact.
Me. Zhao’s parents now work from home and only pick up groceries from a market in their living area. She lamented that she could not meet friends or study in the library, but said learning online has become routine.
“Maybe we got used to it,” she said.
The response highlighted how quickly the government is mobilizing its resources to curb outbreaks.
After the closure was announced on January 6 in Shijiazhuang, authorities collected more than ten million coronavirus test specimens over the next three days – almost one for every resident, city officials said at a news conference. These tests yielded 354 positive results, although some of the cases were asymptomatic.
A second round of mass nucleic acid testing began Tuesday.
“It’s really a kind of war system – using wartime for social control in peacetime – and during a pandemic, this war system works,” said Chen Min, a writer and former editor of the newspaper, which went by the name Pen Xiao go, said. Shu. Mr. Chen was in Wuhan last year when the city was closed.
The nature of the country’s governance has provided the tools to tackle the epidemic – even if some measures seem to be on the rise.
“Chinese cities maintain a residential system – smaller residents have several hundred residents, large residents have tens of thousands – and by locking the gates, you can lock tens of thousands of people,” Chen said in a telephone interview. ‘When they encounter these kinds of problems, they’ll probably apply this method. This would be impossible in Western countries. ”
Chris Buckley and Keith Bradsher reported. Claire Fu contributed research.