Covid-19 in China: Second round of tests for Tianjin as cases go up

The northern Chinese city of Tianjin ordered a second of Covid-19 tests for its 14 million residents on Wednesday, the second round in three days, after 33 new local cases were reported for Tuesday.

The northern Chinese city of Tianjin ordered a second of Covid-19 tests for its 14 million residents on Wednesday, the second round in three days, after 33 new local cases were reported for Tuesday, up from 10 for the day before.

A child undergoes a nucleic acid test for Covid-19 in Anyang in China’s central Henan province on Wednesday. (AFP)

Official media said 77 cases of Covid-19 including the Omicron variant have been detected in Tianjin, considered a “gateway” to Beijing and located a 40-minute high-speed train journey away from the capital since last weekend.

The municipal government said in a notice that the second round of mass testing would start on Wednesday afternoon, urging all residents to stay put while awaiting the results of their nucleic acid tests.

The news agency, Xinhua, said authorities have carried out almost 12 million tests so far, with 7.8 million samples returned. Infections were first reported on Saturday.

High-speed rail service and other forms of transportation between Tianjin and Beijing have been suspended, leading to some disruptions in supply chains, including for packaged food items sold in convenience stores, an agency report said.

Of the new local cases, 118 were reported in Henan, 33 in Tianjin, eight in Shaanxi, and seven in Guangdong, the commission said.

China, which has stuck to what is effectively a “zero-Covid” policy, is scrambling to prevent the spread of the highly infectious Omicron variant ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday beginning at the end of January and as Beijing prepares to stage the Winter Olympics from February 4.

In the central province of Henan, the city of Anyang, where Omicron has also been detected in the community linked to the Tianjin outbreak, reported 65 local symptomatic cases on Tuesday, a surge from just two a day earlier.

Vice-premier, Sun Chunlan, visited the province and said Omicron presented a challenge to the city’s virus control efforts.

Officials should “further increase the efficiency of testing and epidemiological investigation and adopt strict community-level control measures,” the official Xinhua news agency quoted her as saying in a report late on Tuesday.