BEIJING (Reuters) – China plans to impose strict COVID testing requirements during the Lunar New Year holiday, when tens of millions of people are expected to travel, while battling the worst wave of new infections since March 2020.
The Shanghai shopping center reported its first cases of local transmission in two months on Thursday, underscoring the growing risk of the virus spreading elsewhere.
Millions of people in Hebei province, near Beijing, and in Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces in the northeast of the country, have been arrested in recent weeks.
Authorities are asking people to stay home during the February holiday season in their effort to prevent another debilitating outbreak.
New restrictions are also being adopted by local governments in areas that have not yet experienced major outbreaks, including a southwestern city that has banned foreigners from entering abroad.
A total of 144 new cases were reported on January 20, the National Health Commission said on Thursday, matching the total reported on January 14 and marking the highest number of daily infections since March 1. This is still a fraction of what China saw during the peak of the outbreak in January-February 2020, however.
Of the 126 new local infections, Heilongjiang accounted for 68, while Jilin reported 33. Hebei, who has so far seen the largest increase in cases this month, reported 20 new cases, and Beijing reported two cases.
The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed infections, rose from 58 to 113 the day before.
In a notice posted online, the National Health Commission of China said that people returning to rural areas in other provinces during the Lunar New Year period would have to produce a negative COVID-19 test done in seven days.
Most of China’s 280 million rural migrant workers travel to their villages at this time of year.
Those who work with products imported from the cold chain, or quarantine workers, among other groups, would also have to do a test, even if they remained in the same province, the announcement said.
The control of the epidemic in rural areas, as well as infections spread through imported frozen products, were identified by the authorities as weak links partially responsible for the current outbreaks.
An announcement by an NHC official during a news conference on Wednesday suggested that everyone who returned home would have to take a test. Official Xinhua media published an article asking authorities to clarify the details “as soon as possible”.
NEW STEPS
Although the latest increase in cases remained mainly in the Northeast, some officials in other parts of China have implemented aggressive measures in an attempt to eliminate the possibility of developing a cluster.
The city of Ruili, in the southwestern province of Yunnan, a popular tourist spot due to the warmer climate, on Wednesday blocked foreigners traveling from abroad.
The city will also test all Chinese citizens entering the city from areas designated as medium or high risk for COVID-19 and will require them to be quarantined for three weeks – two of which in centralized facilities.
Yunnan reported no new local infections during the current wave, but Ruili was forced to quarantine some residents in September after discovering two infections imported from Myanmar.
Shanghai on Thursday reported three local cases of COVID-19, its first infections since 23 November. The city launched mass tests of all hospital staff on Thursday after two of those workers at different facilities returned “suspicious” results from the COVID-19 test this week.
These individuals have not yet been officially declared as confirmed cases.
The total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in mainland China is now 88,701, while the death toll has remained unchanged at 4,635.
(Reporting by Jing Wang and Brenda Goh in Shanghai, Gabriel Crossley and Roxanne Liu in Beijing; Written by Se Young Lee; Editing by Jacqueline Wong, Gerry Doyle and Michael Perry)