Beijing, May 5 (Representative) Starting Thursday, a negative nucleic test issued within seven days will be mandatory to ride on public transport or enter public venues in the China capital, state media said, as the administration extended curbs that began during China’s week-long holiday centred around May 1. Many cinemas, malls and gyms across the city have already closed their doors since late April while indoor dining is also banned. Schools also remain closed after the holiday ended. Negative test result is also required to enter places such as supermarkets. Authorities in Beijing have shuttered the entrances to more than 40 subway stations and 158 bus routes, as the government tries to rein in the spread of the highly-contagious Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
The transit restrictions imposed on Wednesday affected districts on the eastern side of Beijing at the epicentre of its latest outbreak. Beijing has reported nearly 450 new cases since April 22 after testing 22 million people over three rounds of mass testing, according to state media. The city is trying to avoid a Shanghai-style lockdown, which since the end of March has brought China’s most important economic centre to a standstill, the Aljazeera reported. The lockdown in Shanghai also unleashed a wave of grievances against local authorities as residents as they were confined to their homes and struggled to secure enough food. People in the city also reported that they were denied medical treatment at hospitals or restricted to quarantine facilities for days after passing a positive test as the government marshals its resources in pursuit of “zero Covid”.
China’s internet has been captivated by reports on social media of health workers killing pets after their owners were taken into quarantine or animals otherwise left to starve at home. The Chinese mainland on Wednesday reported 360 locally transmitted confirmed Covid-19 cases, of which 261 were in Shanghai, according to the National Health Commission’s report Thursday. Apart from Shanghai, 12 other provincial-level regions on the mainland saw new local cases, including 42 in Beijing and 14 in Henan. Shanghai also reported 4,390 locally transmitted asymptomatic infections Wednesday, out of a total of 4,678 local asymptomatic carriers newly identified on the mainland, Xinhua news agency reported. Following the recovery of 2,215 patients on Wednesday, there were 12,755 confirmed coronavirus cases undergoing treatment in hospitals across the Chinese mainland. Wednesday saw 13 deaths from Covid, all in Shanghai, bringing the mainland’s total deaths from the pandaemic to 5,141 since the virus broke out began 2019-end.