Beijing Covid spike prompts mass testing, panic buying

Fears of a hard Covid lockdown sparked panic buying in Beijing on Monday, as long queues for compulsory mass testing formed in a large central district of the Chinese capital.

China is already trying to contain a wave of infections in its biggest city Shanghai, which has been almost entirely locked down for weeks and reported 51 new Covid deaths.

Shanghai has struggled to provide fresh food to those confined at home, while patients have reported trouble accessing non-Covid medical care-and the rising cases in the capital triggered fears of a similar lockdown.

Downtown Beijing's most populous district Chaoyang, home to around 3.5 million people, ordered mass testing from Monday for residents and those coming to work there. The area hosts embassies and the headquarters of many multinational firms.

Queues snaked around malls and outside office complexes as people waited to be swabbed by health workers in protective gear.

"If a single case is found, this area could be affected," said office worker Yao Leiming, 25, as he headed for a testing site in Chaoyang with a group of colleagues. The mass testing order, and warnings of a "grim" Covid situation in the city, sparked a run on Beijing's supermarkets overnight as residents rushed to stockpile essentials.

Many items on grocery delivery apps sold out on Sunday night after the testing order was announced, but stocks were replenished Monday.

Beijing health official Pang Xinghuo said at a press conference

Monday there had been 70 infections across half the city's districts since Friday, saying the "distribution area of infected people... has expanded".

As tempting as access to Elon Musk's wealth may be, Twitter is not eager to be ruled by a billionaire known for shooting from the hip with little regard for the consequences.

The global one-to-many messaging platform is moving to prevent the Tesla boss from getting his hands on all of Twitter's outstanding shares, signaling that worries about where he would lead the company outweigh the proffered payoff. "It's management, the board, that feels something is wrong," said Endpoint Technologies analyst Roger Kay.

"Musk is essentially an autocrat; his form of libertarianism has a twinge of far right politics to it."

Earlier this month Musk, the world's richest person and a controversial and frequent user of Twitter himself, made an unsolicited bid of $43 million for the social media network, citing better freedom of speech as a motivation.

The offer, which he said was final, values Twitter at $54.20 per share-above the closing price ahead of his bid, but below a high of $77.06 hit in February of last year.

Twitter's board opted to swallow a "poison pill," saying any acquisition of over 15 percent of the firm's stock without its OK would trigger a plan to flood the market with shares and thus make a buyout much harder.

Musk already owns more than nine percent of the company, making him its largest stakeholder.

The billionaire went on to tweet "Love me tender," an Elvis Presley song title that some took to hint he is mulling whether to sidestep the board and take his "tender" directly to shareholders.

"I think he is running with scissors," said analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group.