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New Covid Cases Slow in Shanghai, but Increase in Beijing


BEIJING – Shanghai showed on Wednesday making gradual progress in controlling coronavirus outbreaks, while Beijing continued to detect more cases as it attempted to test three times a year. day for nearly all 22 million residents of the capital.

Shanghai announced the lowest total number of new cases for the week: 12,309. Only 171 of those were detected among those who remained in the wider community. The rest are among those who have been quarantined because they have been in contact with people who have been infected before and are less likely to infect others, according to city data.

Zhao Dandan, deputy director of the Shanghai Health Commission, said at a press conference that authorities will allow limited activities in areas with no virus transmission outside the quarantine area, but will maintain locking down the rest of the city.

Beijing officials say they detected 46 more cases in the 23 hours to midday Wednesday, as a massive program of PCR testing continued. Li Ang, deputy head of the city’s quarantine and inspection working group, said Beijing has processed 19.8 million tests since the first round of testing.

On Wednesday, Beijing identified three more neighborhoods as high-risk and another four as medium-risk, a label reminded of the lockdown.

The scale of Beijing’s testing program is enormous. Folding tables were set up every few blocks near major roads. Up to half a dozen volunteers help guide people and get their names, and some medical staff perform quick mouth swabs.

Using so-called batch testing, multiple swabs are placed in a pink liquid in a single test tube and sent to a laboratory. If the fluid test results are positive for the presence of the virus, authorities contact each person with the swab in the tube and conduct an intensive nasal PCR test.

Li said the city has mobilized 35,000 medical staff to take samples for testing and 104,000 other volunteers and other assistants to help them.

At a roadside testing site on Wednesday night in Chaoyang, the Beijing district with the most cases, 18 people were queuing, many of whom appeared to be on their way home from work. Two medical staff in blue full-body protective suits took oral samples at two clearly separated tables.

Two other workers, in full white hazardous material suits, checked their identity cards. 11 other security guards and other aides stood nearby, wearing blue disposable hospital gowns over their clothes. Fast moving lines and free tests.

Richard Reithinger, vice president of global health at the Triangle Research Institute, a North Carolina nonprofit research group, says the scale of China’s testing program is impressive, but some resources are available. could be better used to extend vaccination. China still lags far behind Western countries in the proportion of elderly people who have been vaccinated in particular.

Beijing has now had 138 cases as of last Friday, scattered across half of its 16 counties. Three dozen of them are linked to a single middle school in southeastern Beijing.

But most Beijingers can still move freely around the capital. Residents of inland industrial cities are being treated much less gently.

Yiwu, a city of nearly two million people in central China, is a commercial and manufacturing hub for everything from plastic toys to US election campaign merchandise, ordered Wednesday that no residents leave their apartment complex until further notice after only three infections were found there. Baotou, a type of steel and rare earth metals The center of nearly three million people in China’s Inner Mongolia region, was locked down Monday night after only two cases were found and then one more was discovered.

The CSI 300 index of share prices of major companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges rose 2.9% on Wednesday as investors seemed to conclude that the worst of the outbreak may have passed now. The index fell 4.9% on Monday amid alarm over the discovery of dozens of infections in Beijing over the weekend.

Beijing residents said in an interview on Wednesday, making a mandatory nucleic acid test every other day is not the biggest nuisance from the continued campaign against the coronavirus. Regular PCR testing has become a fact in many people’s lives.

Zhou Yunhong, a pork seller in central Beijing, says she has been taking the test daily since February because of government requirements for anyone working with chilled food.

“I feel like it’s good — testing is responsible for our customers,” she said.

The biggest annoyance that many Beijingers find lies in the fact that strict rules prevent them from visiting family members in other towns or going on vacation, including during the National Day holiday, which begins on Sunday. this weekend.

Beijing has been warning residents for months that if they leave the capital, they may not be allowed to return, fearing they could bring the virus back from other cities. But now, other communities are starting to discourage Beijing residents from coming, fearing that they may also be carriers of the coronavirus.

Li Kun, an egg seller at a covered market in Beijing, says she lives just across the city border in Hebei province. But she was unable to return home for nearly two weeks to see her daughter, who is in high school and now lives alone in their house.

“The speakers in our village shouted, ‘Residents from Beijing are not allowed in,’ she said. “I do a PCR test every day, I know I’m fine, but the people in the village don’t know; they’re worried.”

Every night, she has an online video chat with her daughter, she said, adding, “I want to go home.”

Li You and Liu Yi research contributions.



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