E-Paper
Covid-19: Chengdu lockdown continues as China advises citizens not to travel during holidays
The city of Chengdu was locked down on September 1 after a number of Covid-19 cases were detected in many districts. It is now the largest Chinese city to be placed under strict curbs since Shanghai earlier this year, which faced a crippling lockdown for two months
BEIJING: Chengdu, a megacity with over 21 million residents, indefinitely extended the ongoing lockdown on Thursday to contain a spreading Covid-19 outbreak as the national health authorities said the virus situation continues to be “serious and complex” in the country.
“The prevention and control situation of Covid-19 is still serious and complex as 29 provinces in the Chinese mainland reported local Covid-19 inflections in September,” Mi Feng, national health commission (NHC) spokesperson said on Thursday.
Mi was quoted by state media as saying that “…some community spread of Covid-19 and the virus’s spillover is not cut off yet, and China is also facing growing pressure from cases imported from abroad”.
The city of Chengdu was locked down on September 1 after a number of Covid-19 cases were detected in many districts.
It is now the largest Chinese city to be placed under strict Covid-19 curbs since Shanghai earlier this year, which faced a crippling lockdown for two months.
The city detected 116 new cases for September 7 versus 121 the day earlier.
Beijing is also battling a new cluster of 27 cases, most of which have been reported from Beijing University of Chemical Technology campus in the Changping district of the city.
Three cases have been reported from a high school, local health authorities have said.
Several schools and universities in Beijing have tightened their epidemic prevention management, requiring students and teachers to report their daily health condition and locations, the state-run Global Times tabloid reported
The NHC, meanwhile, sent out an advisory for the whole country asking citizens not to travel cross-country for the upcoming Mid-Autumn holidays this coming weekend and for the National Day holidays in the first week of October.
Wu Liangyou, deputy director of NHC’s Bureau of Disease Control and Prevention said the advisory was issued to advocate “…for the masses to celebrate the National Day holiday locally, minimise cross-city travel, and avoid the risk of epidemic spread caused by large-scale movement of people”.
Wu said prevention and control measures including the strict checking of the health code and negative nucleic acid test reports will be implemented from September 10 to the end of October 2022.
The measures, he said, will be further optimised and improved according to the epidemic situation in the future.
“Beijing, for example, suggests that residents not travel to areas with high or medium infection risks or places with recently reported confirmed cases. Those who plan to travel to Beijing should have a negative nucleic acid test result within 24 hours and take a nucleic acid test within 72 hours of arriving in the city,” state-run China Daily newspaper reported.
The Chinese mainland on Wednesday reported 241 locally transmitted confirmed Covid-19 cases, including 69 in Sichuan and 67 in Inner Mongolia, the NHC said, adding that 1,093 local asymptomatic infections were also identified.
