Facing new outbreaks, China places more than 22 million on lockdown
Whenahandfulofnewcoronavirus cases materialized this month in a province surrounding Beijing — apparently spread at a village wedding party — Chinese authorities bolted into action.
They locked down two cities with more than 17 million people, Shijiazhuang and Xingtai. They ordered a crash testing regime of nearly every resident there, which was completed in a matter of days.
They shut down transportation and canceled weddings, funerals and, most significantly, a provincial Communist Party conference.
By this week the lockdowns expanded to include another city on the edge of Beijing, Langfang, as well as a county in Heilongjiang, a northeastern province. Districts in Beijing itself, alsoshutdown.
More than 22 million people in all have been ordered to remain inside their homes — double the number affected in January 2020 when China’s central government locked down Wuhan, the central city where the virus was first reported, in a move that was then seen as extraordinary.
The flare-ups remain small compared with the devastation facing other countries, but they threaten to undercut the success the country’s Communist Party has had in subduing the virus, allowing its economy to surge back after last year’s slump and its people to return to something close to normal lives.
The urgency of the government’s current response stands in contrast to that of officials in Wuhan last year who feared a backlash if they disclosed the mysterious new illnesses then emerging. Local officials there had gone ahead with a Communist
Party conference like the one now canceled in Hebei, despite knowing the risk of the disease spreading among people.
Since Wuhan, authorities have created a playbook that mobilizes party cadres to quickly respond to new outbreaks by sealing off neighborhoods, conducting widespread testing and quarantining large groups when needed.
“In the process of infectious disease prevention and control, one of the key points is to seek truth from facts, to openly and transparently release epidemic information and never to allow covering up or underreporting,” the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, said at a meeting Friday of the State Council, China’s Cabinet.
China, a country of 1.4 billion people, has reported an average of 109 new cases a day over the past week, according to a New York Times database. The numbers are the worst in China since last summer.
China’s National Health Commission has not reported any new deaths, but the World Health Organization, which uses information from China, has recorded 12 so far in 2021.
In Hebei, the province where the new outbreak has been concentrated, officials last week declared a “wartime state” that shows no sign of lifting soon.
Throughout the pandemic, officials have appeared especially worried about Beijing.
The outbreaks, coming after so long with minimal cases, have increased anxiety across China, where residents in most places felt like the pandemic was a thing of the past.
New cases have also been reported in the northern province of Shanxi and the northeastern provinces of Heilongjiang and Jilin. Shanghai on Wednesday urged residents not to leave the city.
After a taxi driver tested positive during the weekend in Beijing, authorities tracked down 144 passengers for additional tests, according to The Global Times, a state tabloid. Now anyone getting in a taxi or car service in Beijing has to scan a QR code from their phone, allowing the government to trace them quickly.
The government has moved ahead on plans to vaccinate 50 million people before next month’s Lunar New Year, a holiday in which hundreds of millions of people traditionally crisscross the country to visit their families. By Wednesday, more than 10 million doses had been distributed.