Several Chinese cities adopt COVID restrictions while millions remain confined

By: News Team

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Several Chinese cities affected by COVID-19, from the east to the west of the country, imposed new restrictions and lockdowns on their population on Thursday to contain outbreaks that again threaten to disrupt the national economy.

Reducing unnecessary population movements for a few days — a softer kind of lockdown — as dozens of new cases emerge is a key practice of China’s “dynamic zero COVID” strategy. The goal is to prevent efforts to stop an outbreak from turning into the prolonged nightmares seen in Shanghai and Wuhan.

Uncertainty about the duration of these small lockdowns, as omicron’s high transmissibility makes it harder to clear infections, has affected business confidence and made people less willing to travel.

The eastern export and manufacturing hub of Yiwu said on Thursday it would enter three days of “quiet management,” with most of its residents banned from leaving designated areas and some confined to their homes.

Yiwu’s 1.9 million residents joined millions of others in various cities whose movements are largely restricted to their residential compounds, unless they have to go out for things like COVID-19 testing, food shopping or hospital visits.

Businesses whose employees can work indoors are still allowed to operate, while all public places in Yiwu were required to be closed for the three days, excluding hospitals and other places offering essential services.

In China’s western Xinjiang region, three cities in the Aksu area from Thursday allowed employees to leave their homes for work, while restricting everyone else to necessary commuting only. It is unclear when the measures will be lifted.

For their part, key districts of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, have been in lockdown for five days since Wednesday.

Outbreaks in the tourist resorts of Hainan and Tibet continued to expand, with affected cities under lockdown.

The National Health Commission reported on Thursday that 1,993 new cases of internally transmitted coronavirus had been registered on August 10, 614 symptomatic and 1,379 asymptomatic.

There were no new deaths, so the number of fatalities remained at 5,226. China has confirmed 232,809 cases with symptoms as of August 10, including locally transmitted cases and those among new arrivals.

China’s capital Beijing reported two local cases in the previous day, while financial hub Shanghai and southern tech hub Shenzhen reported no new local infections.

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