Hindustan Times (West UP)

Beijing shuts parks, museums as China’s Covid cases top 28k

- Letters@hindustant­imes.com

BEIJING: Beijing shut parks, malls and museums on Tuesday while more Chinese cities resumed mass testing for Covid-19 as authoritie­s struggle with a spike in cases that has deepened concern about the economy and dimmed hopes for a quick reopening.

China reported 28,127 new domestical­ly transmitte­d cases for Monday, nearing its daily peak from April, with infections in the southern city of Guangzhou and the southweste­rn municipali­ty of Chongqing accounting for about half the total.

In Beijing, cases have been hitting new highs every day, prompting calls from the city government for more residents to stay put and show proof of a negative Covid test, not more than 48 hours old, to get into public buildings.

The wave of infections is testing recent adjustment­s China has made to its zero-Covid policy, aimed at making authoritie­s more targeted in clampdown measures and steering them away from blanket lockdowns and testing that have strangled the economy and frustrated residents nearly three years into the pandemic.

Shanghai on Tuesday ordered the closure of cultural and entertainm­ent venues in seven of its 16 districts after reporting 48 new local infections, while the city of Tianjin, near Beijing, became the latest to order citywide testing.

Even after the adjusted guidelines, China remains a global outlier with its strict Covid restrictio­ns, including borders that remain all-but-shut.

Tightening measures in Beijing and elsewhere, even as China tries to avoid city-wide lockdowns like the one that crippled Shanghai this year, have renewed investor worries about the world’s second-largest economy, weighing on stocks and prompting analysts to cut forecasts for China’s yearend oil demand.

Brokerage Nomura said its in-house index estimated that localities accounting for about 19.9% of China’s total gross domestic product were under some form of lockdown or curbs, up from 15.6% last Monday and not far off the index’s peak in April, during Shanghai’s lockdown.

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