China’s capital Beijing braces for several more rounds of mandatory testing as its largest district aims to screen most of the Chinese capital’s 22 million residents after detecting less than 40 cases since the beginning of this week.
Residents of Chaoyang district, who underwent testing earlier on Monday, will be re-tested again on Wednesday. The results of the tests conducted on Monday are yet to be fully published.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) faces a tough challenge ahead of the fall annual meet but still continues to pursue the zero-Covid approach and plans to eradicate Covid-19 completely using hard lockdown, vaccination and mass testing. More than 3.5 million residents of its Chaoyang district on Monday were tested and will be tested again. At least 16 million from other districts were tested and will be tested again on Thursday.
Chinese residents are also concerned after reports of Shanghai lockdown going awry went viral in China – a rare occurrence given that any anti-government sentiment does not find space in public discourse. Beijing residents told foreign news outlets in the city that they are stocking up on essentials but are also scared due to the crowds and worry about being infected.
The Shanghai lockdowns took a severe toll on its residents causing panic, anxiety, death due to hunger and non-treatment of non-Covid diseases and Beijing residents are worried that they could face a similar fate.
The Tongzhou district, which lies east of downtown Beijing, asked employees to work from home and closed schools and other educational institutions after Covid-19 clusters were found.
It is also likely that the caseload and the number of deaths in Shanghai could be higher but government employees are eyeing promotions ahead of this year’s once-in-five-years CCP annual meeting and could be underreporting numbers.
But Shanghai authorities are now allowing limited movement for limited groups of people in districts with basically no community spread of the virus, news agency Bloomberg reported citing Zhao Dandan, vice director of the municipal health commission.
The Shanghai lockdown has dented China’s economic growth plans and will play a role if China fails to achieve its economic targets.
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