Fears of new lockdowns in China as infections remain high

BEIJING • China's Covid-19 cases continue to hover around a two-month high, leaving residents of previously hard-hit areas fearful of more lockdowns and health authorities warning about the challenges ahead.

The country reported 826 cases for Wednesday, compared with 935 on Tuesday, which was the highest daily tally since May 21.

While most of the outbreak is hitting places beyond major cities, some neighbourhoods in Shenzhen implemented new lockdowns and infections in Shanghai continue to spread - spooking residents who endured previous isolation efforts.

China's health officials said infections and deaths tied to the new BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants were likely to increase in the days to come, given their fast transmission among the elderly, which has already led to a rise in critical cases.

They plan to focus on new mutations in the future, as most experts believe Omicron will not be the last variant, said Dr Dong Xiaoping, chief expert of virology at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.

Shanghai, which recorded 17 cases on Wednesday, will require everyone to take Covid-19 tests at least once a week until the end of August. Anyone who does not test weekly will see their health code turn to yellow, restricting where they can go.

Shenzhen, with a population of nearly 18 million, reported 22 new locally transmitted cases for Wednesday, with the daily count creeping up from single digits earlier this month.

Though the caseload is still negligible by global standards, the slow uptick has pushed the Shenzhen authorities to step up vigilance, to comply with the central government's "dynamic zero" policy of containing outbreaks as soon as they emerge.

Officials locked down the Baishizhou village that features densely packed buildings where many migrant workers live. Several streets in the village were labelled as being of high risk, meaning residents would not be allowed to leave their compounds or homes for seven days.

The authorities vowed to "mobilise all resources" to curb the outbreak, ordering strict implementation of testing and temperature checks, and lockdowns for Covid-19-affected buildings.

Some areas had just gone through more than a week of restrictions, which were lifted on July 16, due to sporadic cases. The news of being locked down again led some residents to climb over fences to escape with luggage in tow, videos posted to social media showed.

The majority of China's cases are still centred in the hot spots of the Guangxi region in the south, which recorded 187 cases on Wednesday - taking its total since the outbreak there flared up just over a week ago to 1,293 - and the remote north-western province of Gansu, which reported 363 new infections, taking its current outbreak to 1,669.

Most of Gansu's capital, Lanzhou, has been locked down for almost a week. City officials on Tuesday launched a "door knocking" campaign to rout out hidden cases, with 10,000 medical workers from around the province going home to home to carry out polymerase chain reaction testing in the city's high-and medium-risk areas.

Meanwhile, Macau has ordered any resident who holds a Philippine passport to take a daily nucleic acid test. Officials deem such residents as being more at risk for infection even though they account for a small number of cases in a Covid-19 wave that is abating.

The testing regimen will start today, health official Leong Iek Hou said at a briefing yesterday.

Government data shows Filipinos have accounted for 9.5 per cent of the city's total of 1,795 Covid-19 cases this outbreak, Dr Leong said.

"Our epidemiology research found they tend to have more gatherings, like meetings among friends," Dr Leong said. "It's likely that they have more interactions within their own ethnicity, so we need to find out whether there are hidden sources of infections among them via frequent testing."

Macau's push echoes Hong Kong's insistence in May last year that all foreign domestic helpers - the majority of whom are women from the Philippines - had to be tested for Covid-19 after a variant was detected in a worker.

Officials in the financial hub said the cohort's tendency to gather with friends on their days off risked cross-family infection, but it sparked criticism about the discriminatory policy, as no other occupational group needed to undergo testing.

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, BLOOMBERG