China to test 12m in Zhengzhou city
Outbreak tests plan for Winter Olympics
The city of Zhengzhou in east-central Henan province ordered its 12 million residents to take Covid19 tests yesterday after a handful of cases were detected, as China fights to stamp out virus clusters ahead of the Winter Olympics.
Everyone in Zhengzhou, which has been placed under a partial lockdown, must be tested to “thoroughly uncover infections hidden among the public”, the city’s government said yesterday.
Zhengzhou has detected 11 cases in recent days.
The mass-testing order came as case numbers in the locked-down city of Xi’an in northern Shaanxi province fell to their lowest in weeks, with officials saying that outbreak had been “brought under control”.
Xi’an’s 13 million residents have been under stay-at-home orders for a fortnight.
“Although the case number has been high for many days, the rapid rise in Covid spread at community level has been brought under control compared with the early stages of the outbreak,” said Ma Guanghui, deputy director of Shaanxi’s health commission.
“The epidemic is showing a downward trend.”
China has stuck to a rigid approach of stamping out Covid cases when they appear, with tight border restrictions and targeted lockdowns since the virus first emerged in the country in 2019.
But, with less than a month to go until the Olympics, a series of small outbreaks across the country has put the strategy under pressure.
Although the number of reported cases in China is very low compared with other nations, infections in recent weeks have reached a high not seen in the country since March 2020.
China recorded 91 cases yesterday — including 35 in Xi’an, the city’s lowest tally since mid-December.
The Zhengzhou outbreak is tiny by comparison, but officials are taking no chances.
State media said about 500 close contacts had been traced from the outbreak’s two symptomatic cases, linked through mahjong rooms and family gatherings. Eight residential communities were locked down.
On Monday, one million people in Yuzhou city, also in Henan, were put under stay-at-home orders after three asymptomatic cases.