Following a new flare-up of Covid-19 in Xinjiang, trains and buses leaving the region were suspended and many parts of Xinjiang, including the capital city Urumqi, have been placed under lockdown. Flights leaving Xinjiang are required to keep the passenger occupancy lower than 75%. Liu Sushe, Vice Chairman of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, admitted that the government has failed to contain the outbreak that started two months ago. Especially smaller cities struggle to contain the number of cases. Xinjiang is home to 22 million people and has been in partial lockdown since August. Authorities reported that nucleic acid testing has become the biggest weakness in Xinjiang's prevention and control efforts. As it is getting colder in Xinjiang and the temperature in Urumqi mostly has been below 10ºC recently, the Covid-19 virus is becoming more active in the region, making it easier to transmit, Yang Zhanqiu, Professor of the Pathogen Biology Department at Wuhan University, told the Global Times.
Surging Covid-19 infections have also been reported in some areas of Inner Mongolia during the just-concluded weeklong National Day holiday. At least 10 prefecture-level areas have reported new Covid-19 cases which first emerged on September 28 in Hohhot. Some urban areas and counties in Ulanhot and Hulunbuir started temporary static management and carried out mass nucleic acid testing. All interprovincial and intercity bus services have been suspended and the number of inbound and outbound flights and trains have been significantly reduced.
The city of Sanya in Hainan ordered tourists to take PCR tests during the past holiday week or have their movements restricted through the health code system. In August, Sanya imposed a lockdown that trapped more than 80,000 tourists at the height of the summer holiday. Covid-19 controls have also led to travel chaos in Xishuangbanna Dai autonomous prefecture in Yunnan province and other popular tourist destinations during the National Day holiday.
In Beijing, 13 new symptomatic and 3 asymptomatic cases were reported on October 10, and 13 and 1 on October 11, less than a week before the opening of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party. Beijing has reported 39 Covid-19 infections since September 29 as of Sunday afternoon, according to the Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control. Liu Xiaofeng, Deputy Director of the Center, said that the cases involved 10 transmission chains in eight districts in the city. Some people who returned to the capital after holiday trips failed to follow required measures, which added to the difficulty of the current epidemic control and prevention work, the Center said. Upon arrival, nucleic acid tests should be taken twice within three days and recent returnees should not visit crowded places or dine with others for a week.
People traveling or returning to Shanghai from other provinces will receive a pop-up notification covering their health code, if they fail to undergo a nucleic acid test within 48 hours of their arrival. The pop-up window will prevent travelers from displaying their health code, preventing them from accessing most of Shanghai’s public services, transport and public places. It will disappear after taking a PCR test. Shanghai has reported some 90 positive Covid-19 cases since October 1, mainly travelers arriving from other provinces and their close contacts.
At least 33 cities, including eight major provincial and municipal centers, were placed under partial lockdown in September, disrupting the lives of about 65 million people. Between 100 and 250 symptomatic cases were reported daily during the weeklong holiday from October 1 to 7. In Guangdong province, cases were reported in Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
A new Omicron variant that has caused multiple infections in Shaoguan, Guangdong province, has been identified as the subvariant BA.5.1.7, the first time the variant has been detected in the Chinese mainland. According to the Shaoguan government, there have been a number of imported Covid-19 cases with multiple sources and multiple chains in the city, leading to successive positive cases. The highly contagious BA.5.1.7 has already been discovered in more than 100 countries and regions.
The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has vowed to crack down on online rumors related to the Covid-19 pandemic. The agency said that to date, it has shut down 2,800 accounts on several major platforms for fabricating and spreading false information. The CAC started a campaign in August to label what authorities consider fake news. The regulator also listed rumors that “misled internet users and seriously disrupted public order”, including an account on Tencent’s WeChat that said there were large-scale flight cancellations across the country.
This overview is based on reports by the China Daily, Shanghai Daily, Global Times and South China Morning Post.
