Covid update: Beijing tightens curbs as May Day holidays begin
BEIJING: Shanghai detected no new daily Covid-19 case outside quarantine areas for April 29, a first in weeks, health authorities said on Saturday even as Beijing tightened restrictions across the city on the first day of the five-day Labour Day holidays.
Beijing has ordered shut all schools, public places including entertainment venues and gyms and theatres until May 4 as it attempts to stop residents from gathering or going out during the holidays. The fiveday break is usually one of China’s busiest travel periods but the country’s worst Covid resurgence since the pandemic in early 2020 is more than likely to keep people home.
Even after the holidays are over, the local government in Beijing has said residents must provide nucleic-acid test results within seven days before going to public places or taking public transport. Starting May 5, a negative Covid test taken within the past week will be needed to enter “all kinds of public areas and to take public transport”, according to a notice on the city’s official WeChat page. A nucleic acid test result taken within 48 hours is also required to stay in hotels and BNBs. Officials, neither in Beijing nor in paralysed Shanghai, have provided a timeline for returning to some semblance of normality. Shanghai reported 47 Covid-19 deaths for Friday, down from 52 a day earlier, pushing the death toll to 385 in the ongoing outbreak. The overall death toll in China stands at 5,022.
China’s mRNA vaccine to be trialled in UAE
China’s Suzhou Abogen Biosciences said its Covid-19 vaccine candidate using the messenger RNA (mRNA) technology and targeting the Omicron variant has obtained clinical trial approval in the United Arab Emirates. With Friday’s announcement, Abogen joins Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna in trialing candidates modified specifically against Omicron, a highly transmissible variant with increased resistance to antibodies elicited by existing shots. Meanwhile, Pfizer on Friday said a large trial found that its oral antiviral treatment Paxlovid was not effective at preventing coronavirus infection in people living with someone infected with the virus.
The trial enrolled 3,000 adults who were household contacts exposed to an individual who was experiencing symptoms and had recently tested positive for Covid-19. They were either given Paxlovid for five or 10 days or a placebo.
Canadian police arrest anti-mandate protesters
Police wearing helmets and shields made several arrests on Friday night in Ottawa after facing off against protesters opposed to Covid-19 mandates.
Big-rig trucks attempted to make their way to Parliament Hill as part of the “Rolling Thunder” rally, organised by Freedom Fighters Canada, a group dedicated to speaking out against Covid-19 mandates.
Many of the protesters were also part of the three-week Freedom Convoy demonstration that gridlocked Ottawa earlier this year with big rigs, prompting Canada’s federal government to invoke the Emergencies Act for the first time.