Virus upsurge: Chinese city locks down neighbourhood

Beijing, May 29: The southern Chinese city of Guangzhou shut down a neighbourhood and ordered residents to stay home Saturday to be tested for the Coronavirus following an upsurge in infections that has rattled authorities. Guangzhou, a business and industrial centre of

15 million people north of Hong Hong, has reported

20 new infections over the past week. The number is small compared with India’s thousands of daily cases but alarmed Chinese authorities who believed they had the disease under control.

The spread of infections was fast and strong, the official Global Times newspaper cited health authorities

has contributed to the surge we have seen throughout 2020 and during the first quarter of 2021,” he warned.

“We must stay the course while striving to increase vaccination coverage.” The biggest concern for Europe is the highly contagious variant first detected in India, which has brought that country to its knees and found a growing foothold in Britain. The British government warned Thursday that the variant from India accounts for 50 per cent to 75 per cent of all new infections and could delay its plans to lift remaining social restrictions on June 21.

“If we’ve learned anything about this virus, it's that once it starts to spread beyond a few cases, it becomes very difficult to contain,” said Lawrence Young, a virologist. as saying.

Saturday’s testing order applied to residents of five streets in Liwan District in the city centre.

Outdoor markets, child care centres and entertainment venues were closed. Indoor restaurant dining was prohibited. Grade schools were told to stop inperson classes. People in parts of four nearby districts were ordered to limit outdoor activity.

China reports a handful of new cases every day but says almost all are believed to be people who were infected abroad. The mainland's official death toll stands at 4,636 out of 91,061 confirmed cases.

On Saturday, the National Health Commission reported two new locally transmitted cases in Guangzhou and 14 in other parts of the country that it said came from abroad.

Most of the latest infections in Guangzhou are believed to be linked to a 75-year-old man who was found May 21 to have the variant first identified in India, state media say. Most of the others lived together or attended a dinner with the man.

That infection spread to the nearby city of Nanshan, where one new confirmed case and two asymptomatic ones were reported Saturday after people from Guangzhou were tested, according to The Global Times.