A medical worker wearing a protective suit collects a smear from a local resident’s throat for rapid testing of Covid-19 antigen at a temporary testing center on January 6, 2021 in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, China.
Visual China Group | Getty Images
BEIJING – Chinese authorities are beginning to block parts of a province neighboring Beijing after an increase in coronavirus cases.
The restrictions implemented in Hebei this week are some of the strictest since the spread of Covid-19 stagnated in the country in March, and occurs when new waves of the coronavirus hit the US and Europe. China’s harsh initial response to the pandemic contributed to a 6.8% contraction in the economy in the first quarter.
Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province and located about three and a half hours by car southwest of Beijing, reported on Wednesday 50 new confirmed cases of coronavirus and 67 asymptomatic. It took the provincial total to 90 current confirmed cases and 144 asymptomatic cases.
The city prevented passengers from going to the train station, suspended long-distance buses, closed schools and placed tighter controls on the entrance to condominiums, while authorities blocked the main roads in the province, according to state media.
Hebei province started reporting some cases of coronavirus over the weekend, with state media attributing some to the wedding participants.
The new cases come just weeks after Beijing reported a handful of cases in succession, which led to mass testing in certain districts of the country’s capital.
Chinese officials have praised its ability to control the virus before the developed world and have attributed most cases since last spring to foreign sources. The country is the only major economy expected to grow in 2020.
But at the end of last year, officials began to express more concerns about the ongoing pandemic.
The increase in coronavirus cases in the latest Hebei outbreak indicates that the virus has spread over a period of time, said Feng Zijian, deputy head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, in an interview with state media earlier this week.
Researchers at the disease control center said that genome sequencing showed that Hebei strains were different from those found elsewhere in China and unrelated to the strain in the UK, but shared some similarities with versions found in Russia.
Shijiazhuang is a city of about 11 million people and about a 10-hour drive north of Wuhan, in Hubei province, where Covid-19 first emerged in late 2019. The disease has become a global pandemic in a few months and has since infected more than 87 million people worldwide and killed more than 1.8 million.
The Hebei Province Health Commission sent 1,000 doctors on Wednesday to Shijiazhuang to help the city with mass testing and health needs. There are plans to send an additional 2,000 health workers on Thursday.
Chinese authorities are encouraging people to stay in the cities where they work during the Lunar New Year holidays next month. Hundreds of millions of people traditionally return to their hometowns or travel during the extended holiday, which occurs this year in mid-February.