China's Baiyun airport to cancel over 1,000 flights amid Covid

Chinese mainland reported 1,494 new locally transmitted confirmed COVID-19 cases and 47 deaths in the past 24 hours, the National Health Commission said today.

China's Baiyun International Airport is expected to cancel about 1,100 flights on Thursday after one of the airport employees reportedly received an unclear COVID-19 PCR test result amid the surge in coronavirus cases in the country.

A worker in a protective suit measures the body temperature of a woman during a vaccination session against Covid-19 for elderly people, at a community health service centre in Fengxian district of Shanghai, China. (REUTERS)

On Wednesday, the employee received a questionable COVID-19 test result which prompted a mass PCR testing at the airport at night, as per state-run media.

According to the VariFlight flight information provider, the airport is expected to operate about 100 flights on Thursday, with almost 90 per cent of flights cancelled. The operation of subway stations at the airport, as well as buses en route to and from it, is also halted, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Chinese mainland reported 1,494 new locally transmitted confirmed COVID-19 cases and 47 deaths in the past 24 hours, the National Health Commission said today.

Of these local cases, 1,292 were reported in Shanghai while the rest of the cases were reported in 16 other provincial-level regions on the mainland including 56 in Jilin, 48 in Beijing, and 46 in Zhejiang, Xinhua reported citing the commission.

The country also reported 9,791 locally transmitted asymptomatic infections of the virus in the past 24 hours, of which 9,330 local asymptomatic carriers were identified in Shanghai.

Meanwhile, as the COVID-19 outbreak continues to spread in more and more cities in China, questions are mounting over the country's zero covid policy.

The country's much-publicized "zero-covid" strategy that the government credited for bringing the country out of the pandemic till recently is falling apart as the rapidly mounting cases are again forcing mass lockdowns like those seen in 2020.