Beijing district urges staying home for weekend as Covid-19 cases rise
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Health workers on Sunday near a residential area in Beijing under lockdown due to Covid-19 restrictions.
PHOTO: AFP
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BEIJING - Beijing’s biggest district urged people to stay home this weekend as Covid-19 outbreaks grew in numerous Chinese cities on Friday, even as the country further fine-tuned its Covid-19 rules by removing capacity limits at entertainment venues.
Under measures unveiled last week, the authorities have sought to be more targeted in applying Covid-19 curbs that are taking a heavy toll on the economy and fuelling public frustration and anger.
But China is sticking with its zero-tolerance policy, which Beijing argues saves lives, as outbreaks in various cities lead to ongoing localised lockdowns.
Beijing’s Chaoyang district, home to embassies and large office buildings, urged residents to stay home this weekend after the city reported a record 466 infections for Thursday.
“Beijing is going through a big test,” government spokesman Xu Hejian said on Friday.
Some restaurants in the district said they had been told to halt dining-in, while some people were told by their residential compounds to take daily Covid-19 tests. The intensified testing comes as some cities cut back on free community testing, which has been a drain on municipal finances.
On Friday, China reported 25,129 new local cases, up from 23,132 a day earlier and nearing the record of over 29,000 recorded in April during the height of Shanghai’s outbreak.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism on Friday issued guidelines to travel agencies, entertainment and performance venues, removing limits on numbers of people allowed at theatres and events such as concerts and music festivals in low-risk areas without outbreaks.
The specific measures, which are mostly in line with China’s latest rules, could be a bright spot for businesses such as karaoke lounges and Internet cafes that have been hammered by nearly three years of zero-Covid-19 policy.
However, some major cities still barely move when the virus is spreading. There were dramatic falls in the number of people on the subway in the largest cities this week, including major economic powerhouses like Beijing, Guangzhou and Chongqing, despite the updated measures that ended mass testing and citywide lockdowns.
On some recent days in Chongqing, subway usage plummeted 91 per cent, according to a Bloomberg analysis of the transit data. The drop follows the steep decline in Shanghai earlier in 2022 when it was locked down for two months.
The reduction in movement shows that even with fewer hardcore restrictions, China’s major cities are likely to see roughly the same hit to mobility and activity whenever outbreaks flare, dampening hopes of a boost to the country’s economy after the easing of its strict zero-Covid-19 regime.
A web of targeted new rules for high-risk areas and fear of the coronavirus amid proliferating infections have had a similar immobilising effect on the population.
Take the western metropolis Chongqing. Its subway ridership is down more than 80 per cent this week, against the same period in pre-pandemic 2019.
Meanwhile, its daily new local Covid-19 cases have doubled since the weekend, surpassing 4,600 on Thursday.
People line up to take a nucleic acid test for Covid-19 at a testing booth in Chaoyang district, Beijing, on Nov 15, 2022.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The subway in Beijing is ferrying a little more than half the typical number of commuters this week compared with 2019, as the major business district Chaoyang is a hot spot of Covid-19 spread.
The Baidu Map app shows that some major roads in the district, notorious for heavy congestion during peak hours, have been largely open and flowing smoothly this week. No mass lockdown has been ordered and those living in neighbourhoods where cases have not been found can still go out.
But with infections scattered across the city, many residential compounds have been designated high-risk areas, which requires a quarantine, effectively grinding the city to a halt. The government’s Covid-19 tracing app highlights those high-risk areas in red, covering much of the city.
The southern trade hub Guangzhou is in a similar situation. While only part of its main downtown district is under any form of movement restriction, subway usage tanked by 70 per cent this week.
The city has been reporting the country’s biggest increase in daily infections, with more than 9,000 new local cases for Thursday.
“In the next three months, we will likely witness a further drop in mobility in an increasingly large number of cities, not due to official lockdowns, but because people choose to stay at home to avoid the peak of infections,” Ms Helen Qiao and colleagues from Bank of America wrote in a note to clients on Thursday. “We believe local governments will be given more autonomy to experiment on reopening, but reversing to massive lockdowns will be unlikely.” REUTERS, BLOOMBERG
