Beijing shuts dine-in services for holidays to stem outbreak
Eijing—restaurants in Beijing have been ordered to close dinein services over the May holidays as the Chinese capital grapples with a Covid-19 outbreak.
BAuthorities said at a news conference Saturday that dining in restaurants has become an infection risk, citing virus transmissions between diners and staff.
Restaurants have been ordered to only provide takeout services from Sunday to Wednesday, during China’s Labor Day holidays.
Beijing began mass testing millions of residents earlier this week as it scrambled to stamp out a growing Covid-19 outbreak.
The political stakes are high as the ruling Communist Party prepares for a major congress this fall at which President Xi Jinping is seeking a third fiveyear term to reassert his position as China’s unquestioned leader.
Beijing authorities reported 67 new infections on Saturday, taking the city’s total to nearly 300 since April 22.
Authorities have also ordered parks, scenic areas and entertainment venue to operate at half capacity during the holiday period. Schools have also been ordered closed.
Several communities in the city’s most populous Chaoyang district have been designated high-risk areas and will be subjected to mass testing on Sunday and Tuesday.
Beijing is trying to prevent a massive outbreak that could trigger a citywide lockdown like the one that has paralyzed Shanghai for more than three weeks. Millions of residents there have been under lockdown and food has run low at times, prompting heavy criticism despite government efforts to censor it.
Meanwhile, many Chinese are marking a quiet May Day holiday this year as the government’s zero-covid approach restricts travel and enforces lockdowns in multiple cities.
All restaurants in Beijing are closed to dine-in customers from
Sunday through the end of the holiday on Wednesday, open only for takeout and delivery. Parks and tourist attractions in the Chinese capital are limited to 50% of their capacity. The Universal Studios theme park in Beijing, which opened last year, said it had shut down temporarily.
The pandemic situation varies across the vast nation of 1.4 billion people, but the Transport Ministry said last week that it expected 100 million trips to be taken from Saturday to Wednesday, which would be down 60% from last year. Many of those who are traveling are staying within their province as local governments discourage or restrict cross-border travel to try to keep out new infections.
China is sticking to a strict zero-covid policy even as many other countries are easing restrictions and seeing if they can live with the virus. Much of Shanghai—china’s largest city and finance, manufacturing and shipping hub—remains locked down, disrupting people’s lives and dealing a blow to the economy.
The major outbreak in Shanghai, where the death toll has topped 400, appears to be easing. The city recorded 7,872 new locally transmitted cases on Saturday, down from more than 20,000 a day in recent weeks. Outside of Shanghai, only 384 new cases were found in the rest of mainland China.
Beijing, which has tallied 321 cases in the past nine days, is restricting activity to try to prevent a large outbreak and avoid a citywide lockdown similar to Shanghai. Individual buildings and housing complexes with coronavirus cases have been locked down. Visitors to many office buildings and tourist sites such as the Great Wall must show proof of a negative Covid-19 test within the previous 48 hours.
Online booking agency Ctrip said last week that people were booking travel to cities that were mostly virus-free, such as Chengdu in Sichuan province and the nearby city of Chongqing. Other popular destinations included Wuhan, where the world’s first major outbreak of Covid-19 occurred in early 2020. About half the orders on the Ctrip platform were for travel within a province.