Covid is back worrying China’s authoritarian government at a time when it has been attacking various local businesses and boasting about the country’s strong performance at the Tokyo Olympics.
The latest flare up is of the Delta variant and has seen the government back imposing lockdowns and restricting movement across much of the country as the variant emerges in more and more cities and towns.
Chinese English language media reported on Wednesday that the central government has suspended flights and trains, cancelled professional basketball league games and announced mass coronavirus testing in Wuhan where the virus was first detected in late 2019.
This outbreak is far more serious than the eruption in Guangdong province in late May which spluttered on into June before fading away.
The news had no impact on stockmarkets on Wednesday – the Shanghai market ended in the green, as did the key CSI 300 (up around 0.7%) while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was up by just over 1%.
Investors were too busy focusing on the latest government attack on two key sectors – gaming and the manufacturing of computer chips.
A survey of service sector activity in the economy was also issued for July, showing solid gains.
But the speed of the government’s reaction, especially in Beijing indicates the depths of the concern at this outbreak. It is yet another sign that boastful countries or states are still being caught out by the Delta variant of the virus (viz NSW, Vietnam, Singapore, Japan and South Korea).
People in Nanjing — the epicentre of the new outbreak— have been placed under lockdown. Jiangsu province, of which Nanjing is the capital, and neighbouring Zhejiang are major manufacturing centres which has seen some western economists start pencilling in hits to manufacturing in coming weeks.
All 31 provincial-level regions in the Chinese mainland have urged their citizens not to go to medium and high-risk areas for COVID-19 or leave the provinces where they live unless it is necessary.
The Beijing local government has halted ticket sales at 23 stations for Beijing-bound passengers departing from those stations and has also suspended 13 pairs of (fast) trains to Nanjing and Yangzhou in Jiangsu Province, Zhengzhou in Henan Province and Zhangjiajie in Hunan Province, according to a report on the Xingua website.
The Chinese capital has also closed its doors to tourists during the peak summer holiday travel season and is only allowing “essential travellers” with a negative Covid test to enter.
Fresh cases were also reported Sunday on Hainan island — another popular tourist destination — as well as Ningxia and Shandong provinces, authorities said.
Local governments are conducting mass testing and rushing to close off some cities and townships, while tourists are being turned away from popular sights as authorities try to halt (or slow) the spread of the Delta variant during the peak summer travel season.
Flights in and out of Beijing have been cancelled as well.
Nanjing authorities have now conducted three rounds of testing on the city’s 9.2 million residents and placed hundreds of thousands under lockdown, in an effort to curb the outbreak.
They were also scrambling to track more than 5,000 people nationwide who attended a theatre festival in Zhangjiajie, a tourist city in Hunan province which has locked down all 1.5 million residents and shut all tourist attractions.
Xinhua reported on Wednesday that as of Monday, 1,157 confirmed COVID-19 cases were in hospital on the mainland, including 698 imported ones; and as of 3pm Tuesday, China had four high-risk areas and 125 medium-risk areas for COVID-19.
East China’s Jiangsu Province, where the recent airport-related cluster infections of Delta variant occurred, had 327 confirmed local cases receiving medical treatment as of Monday.
Beijing imposed strict entry and exit controls last Sunday, asking all residents to minimise their travels and avoid gatherings.
Three cases were reported in Wuhan on Monday – enough to trigger city wide testing for a second time in 20 months.
