Restaurants, bars, places of worship and even karaoke will close for a week in the large Chinese city of Xi’an (north), after around twenty cases of Covid-19, authorities said on Tuesday. The historical and tourist city of 13 million inhabitants, former imperial capital, is known throughout the world for its buried terracotta army of the first emperor of China. China is one of the last countries to apply a “zero Covid” strategy in the face of the epidemic. It consists of massive screenings, mandatory quarantines in the event of a positive PCR test and targeted confinements.
The government considers this health policy necessary to save medical resources, which are limited in some places, and to preserve the elderly, whose vaccination rate is relatively low. The city of Xi’an has reported 18 positive cases linked to Omicron since Saturday, according to local authorities. A senior municipal official, Zhang Xuedong, announced to the press on Tuesday the application for seven days of “control measures” intended to avoid “the flow of people” and therefore infections. “We are engaged in a race against time against the virus” and it is necessary “to avoid a spread and an outbreak of cases”, he underlined.
Bars, internet cafes, karaoke closed at midnight
Entertainment venues such as bars, cybercafés, bathing establishments and even karaoke will close their doors from midnight Wednesday, the town hall said in a press release. Catering establishments will no longer be able to welcome customers for a week, but will be able to continue to make deliveries and offer a take-out service. Primary and nursery schools will close, as will places of worship.
Xi’an had been locked down for a month between December 2021 and January 2022 due to an outbreak. The authorities had been criticized for their management of the confinement, marked by problems with the supply of food and dramas linked to the fact that certain patients had been refused access to hospitals. “That’s it, here we go again,” reacted a user on the Weibo social network on Tuesday after the announcement of the new measures, in tune with the general tone of the comments.
Testing in Shanghai
The Ministry of Health reported 335 new positive cases nationwide on Tuesday. The main affected area is the eastern province of Anhui, where 1.7 million people in two rural townships are currently confined. In Shanghai, authorities have launched a new round of mandatory PCR tests in most districts, a measure justified by “the many local positive cases recorded” since Sunday.
A large part of the 25 million inhabitants of the metropolis, the economic capital of the country, will thus be screened twice between Tuesday and Thursday. Despite the lifting at the very beginning of June in Shanghai of a harsh confinement of more than two months, certain districts are sometimes confined after the detection of sporadic cases.