Beijing on Friday shut down movie theatres, gyms and shopping malls to arrest the spread of Covid-19 in the capital city. The authorities in the capital city also sealed off apartment blocks.
Beijing health officials are ramping up mass testing and more than 21 million residents, including in the district of Chaoyang, which according to officials speaking to Nikkei Asia accounted for the most number of cases.
Beijing recorded close to 50 new Covid cases but authorities do not want to take a chance as pressure grows on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to stem dissatisfaction among Chinese people ahead of the once-in-five-year Chinese Communist party congress.
The news agency citing data from Hong Kong-based Gavekal Dragonomics, said that out of top 100 cities of China at least 44 cities are under some form of Covid-19 lockdown. All of these cities account for at least one-third of China’s GDP.
China remains reluctant to move away from its zero-Covid policy. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) renamed it as dynamic zero-Covid policy and said that it will not adopt a ‘lying flat’ strategy. The CCP said that the dynamic zero-Covid policy is akin to ‘purchasing insurance for 1.4 billion of Chinese people’, Chinese state-run news agency Global Times reported.
Liang Wannian, head of the expert group in China’s epidemic response, said that if China like the US and other European nations lowered its guard against Covid it could cause medical resources to be severely affected. Liang also said that adopting such a response would increase the threat to patients with underlying diseases, children, seniors, pregnant women and others.
Meanwhile in Shanghai, citizens have some respite from the lockdowns as officials allowed citizens in low-risk districts to leave their homes for the first time in a month. Shanghai at the start of April was locked down and some 25 million residents were ordered to remain indoors as cases surged and deaths increased.
Now more than 12 million people in lower-risk districts can get outside their houses but will they be able to move freely is still unclear as many businesses continue to be shuttered due to the ongoing lockdown. The lockdown in one of the world’s largest financial hubs has crippled the Chinese economic growth expectations.
(with inputs from Global Times, Nikkei Asia and Bloomberg)
Read all the Latest News here
Comments
0 comment