Covid-19 in China: Panic buying in Beijing over lockdown fears
BEIJING: China’s capital Beijing was hit by a wave of panic buying on Thursday as residents rushed to stock up essentials amid fears of an impending Covid-19-related lockdown and banning of home deliveries beginning on Friday.
Residents in Beijing, especially in the hard hit Chaoyang district, lined up in long and tense queues on Thursday afternoon following speculation that the city will be going in for at least a three-day “quiet period”, which means staying at home without access to deliveries and only stepping out to be tested for Covid-19.
Xu Hejian, a Beijing government spokesperson, denied the lockdown rumours and said the city’s some 22 million residents don’t need to be nervous about food supply and that deliveries would not be halted.
‘Cases falling except Americas and Africa’
The number of new coronavirus cases reported worldwide has continued to fall except in the Americas and Africa, the World Health Organisation said in its latest assessment of the pandemic. In its weekly pandemic report released late on Wednesday, the UN health agency said about 3.5 million new cases and more than 25,000 deaths were reported globally, which respectively represent decreases of 12% and 25%.
The number of people who have died from Covid-19 in Europe has passed two million, the WHO said on Thursday.
The United States has crossed the threshold of one million deaths from Covid-19, the White House said on Thursday.
Also, the number of fines issued over breaches of coronavirus regulations at British government offices, including Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s official residence, has expanded to more than 100, London’s Metropolitan Police force said on Thursday.
With inputs from agencies