A resident undergoes a Covid-19 coronavirus test in the basement of a residential complex as part of a mass testing program following new cases of the virus occurring on January 12, 2021 in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, China , originated.
STR | AFP | Getty Images
BEIJING – Local authorities in regions near Beijing are increasing restrictions on social activities as new cases of coronavirus increase.
The city of Langfang, about 1.5 hours south of downtown Beijing, told its nearly 5 million residents on Tuesday to stay home for the next seven days. The city is in Hebei, the same province as Shijiazhuang, a city of 11 million people that was shut down late last week after an increase in coronavirus cases.
Shijiazhuang reported 39 new confirmed cases for Monday, while Langfang announced one. This has brought the total number of current confirmed and asymptomatic cases in Hebei Province to more than 500 people.
Separately, two regions in the northernmost province of Heilongjiang, China, closed on Tuesday. The province reported one new confirmed case and 36 asymptomatic cases for Monday.
Beijing reported one confirmed case for Monday. Since mid-December, the city has reported a handful of cases in close succession, causing stricter restrictions on some apartments and mass tests on the outskirts of the country’s capital.
It was not immediately clear to what extent the local economy would be affected, as there was no official order to stop work. Heilongjiang accounted for just over 1% of China’s GDP in 2019 and Hebei about 3.6%. No province is as economically important as the southeastern parts of China.
Representatives of European and American business associations in China said members were not significantly affected by the latest increase in virus cases. Economic activity generally slows down at the end of January to February as hundreds of millions of workers return to their hometowns for the Moon New Year.
However, some provinces have begun announcing bans on large-scale gatherings and events. The central government encourages people to keep quiet during the New Year holidays that officially fall this year.
“The deteriorating coronavirus situation will affect economic activity, and markets will have to temper their expectations for a strong pent-up consumption demand in the coming LNY holiday in mid-February,” China’s chief economist Ting Lu said in a statement note said. .
“With the deteriorating virus situation and the coldest winter in decades, growth recovery has lost momentum in recent weeks,” he said. ” A complete recovery in the services sector could be delayed, as suggested by the weaker PMI indices for services in December. ‘
Both official and private surveys for last month showed that the services PMI, or the Purchasing Managers’ Index, remained in the expansion area but declined from November.
The Chinese economy shrank by 6.8% in the first quarter of last year when authorities shut down more than half of the country in an effort to control the outbreak.
WHO’s team will start investigation
Covid-19 only originated in late 2019 in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Authorities closed the city by the end of January 2020, but the disease soon spread to the rest of the world in a global pandemic. The coronavirus has since infected more than 90 million people worldwide, killing more than 1.9 million people.
On Thursday, a team from the World Health Organization will arrive in China to investigate the origin of the virus with local scientists. The WHO said the study would begin in Wuhan.
A separate WHO team is working with producers of Covid-19 vaccines from Chinese pharmaceutical companies Sinovac and Sinopharm “to evaluate compliance with quality international manufacturing practices before the WTO’s possible emergency use”, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the WHO, said.
Beijing has pushed back against the idea that Covid-19 comes from China. After the spread of the virus stalled domestically last March, the authorities blamed the subsequent increases in foreign sources.
For the latest outbreak, Hebei Province started reporting cases about ten days ago. On Sunday, an epidemiologist from the provincial disease control center told reporters the cases were likely coming from foreign sources who were in contact with the province before Dec. 15.