China’s looser Covid rules face first test with surging outbreak
ASURGE in Covid cases threatens to turn into an early test of China’s resolve to ease some of its strict virus controls, after health officials over the weekend said the changes were a refinement, not a relaxation, of the rules.
The nation reported 15,525 new local cases for Sunday, the fourth day in a row the number has held above 10,000—a level last seen in late April when Shanghai was in the midst of its grueling lockdown. Guangdong, Henan, Beijing, Chongqing and Inner Mongolia remain the provinces or municipalities with the biggest outbreaks.
Beijing reported 404 cases for Sunday, up from 230 on Saturday and the highest in more than a year. Daily cases in the capital have jumped from the start of the month, when they numbered in the twenties.
Many places boosted restrictions amid the rising cases, even after China on Friday announced a more targeted approach to the pandemic that many took to mean an easing of its zero-tolerance approach. Top health officials over the weekend said stamping out infections remains the guiding principal, leaving local officials to make the difficult decisions if more intensive curbs are needed.
Beijing’s most populous district Chaoyang, which accounts for most of the infections found in the city, ramped up restrictions as its outbreak grew. Most supermarkets and convenience stores require negative tests done within 24 hours to enter, according to notices seen at entrances, even though no formal announcement was made. The same rules apply to many other public venues, including gyms and office buildings.
Guangzhou, which posted 4,065 cases, extended lockdowns in the districts of Panyu and Liwan until Wednesday.
Lockdowns weren’t implemented everywhere cases were rising, however.
Milder moves
THE local government in Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province that surrounds Beijing, acknowledged its situation was “severe and complex” in a Wechat post on Sunday when it posted 544 new infections, up from 486 a day earlier. Still, the outbreak is controllable, it said, vowing to implement the country’s newly released 20 measures and using the minimum force possible.
University campuses, a hot spot of the current outbreak, were evacuated and deep cleaned. People who haven’t been designated as high-risk could gradually return to school starting Monday, according to the government, which said it would ensure daily life would carry on normally everywhere other than high-risk areas.
The milder measures drew high interest across the country, with Shijiazhuang Covid control becoming the No. 1 trending item on Weibo on Monday morning amid reports that mass testing wasn’t being immediately implemented and negative results weren’t needed to enter all public facilities.
On Friday, China reduced the amount of time travelers and close contacts must spend in quarantine, and pulled back on testing in a significant recalibration of the Covid Zero policy that has isolated the world’s second-largest economy and stoked public angst.
The messaging came as a clear riposte to market euphoria over the 20 new measures to guide Covid control, the announcement of which sent Chinese assets surging on Friday as investors cheered a potential shift away from the virus approach that’s exacting a growing economic toll and left China mostly isolated from the rest of the world.
“I have to emphasize in particular that strict Covid prevention and control and the optimizing measures must be combined and implemented at the same time,” Chang Jile, deputy director of the National Health Commission’s Bureau of Disease Prevention and Control, said at a briefing on Saturday.