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Thursday, February 20, 2025

China puts city of 13 million in lockdown ahead of Olympics

by

1155 days ago
20211223
In this photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, residents line up for tests at a COVID-19 testing site in Xi'an in north-western China's Shaanxi Province, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021. China on Wednesday ordered millions of people locked down in neighbourhoods and workplaces in the northern city of Xi'an following a spike in coronavirus cases. (Li Yibo/Xinhua via AP)

In this photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, residents line up for tests at a COVID-19 testing site in Xi'an in north-western China's Shaanxi Province, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021. China on Wednesday ordered millions of people locked down in neighbourhoods and workplaces in the northern city of Xi'an following a spike in coronavirus cases. (Li Yibo/Xinhua via AP)

SOURCE: AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

 

BEI­JING (AP) — Chi­na plunged a city of 13 mil­lion peo­ple in­to lock­down on Thurs­day to stamp out an in­crease in coro­n­avirus in­fec­tions, as the coun­try dou­bles down on its “ze­ro tol­er­ance” pol­i­cy just weeks be­fore it is set to host the Win­ter Olympics.

The re­stric­tions in the north-east­ern city of Xi’an took ef­fect at mid­night Wednes­day, with no word on when they might be lift­ed. They are some of the harsh­est since Chi­na im­posed a strict lock­down last year on more than 11 mil­lion peo­ple in and around the city of Wuhan, where the coro­n­avirus was first de­tect­ed in late 2019.

One per­son from each house­hold will be al­lowed out every two days to buy house­hold ne­ces­si­ties, a gov­ern­ment or­der said. Oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers were re­quired to stay at home, al­though the rule was not be­ing rig­or­ous­ly en­forced, ac­cord­ing to so­cial me­dia posts. Peo­ple who hap­pened to be stay­ing in ho­tels be­came stuck.

There was no word on whether the new cas­es were of the re­cent­ly iden­ti­fied omi­cron vari­ant that ap­pears more con­ta­gious and is dri­ving surges in many parts of the world — or the pre­vi­ous ver­sion, delta. Chi­na has re­port­ed just sev­en omi­cron cas­es so far, but none in Xi’an.

In this photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, a worker wearing a protective suit collects a throat swab sample at a COVID-19 testing site in Xi'an in north-western China's Shaanxi Province, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021. China on Wednesday ordered millions of people locked down in neighbourhoods and workplaces in the northern city of Xi'an following a spike in coronavirus cases. (Li Yibo/Xinhua via AP)

In this photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, a worker wearing a protective suit collects a throat swab sample at a COVID-19 testing site in Xi'an in north-western China's Shaanxi Province, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021. China on Wednesday ordered millions of people locked down in neighbourhoods and workplaces in the northern city of Xi'an following a spike in coronavirus cases. (Li Yibo/Xinhua via AP)

Though the lat­est out­break is 1,000 kilo­me­tres (about 620 miles) south­west of the Olympic host city of Bei­jing, any sign that the pan­dem­ic might be wors­en­ing in Chi­na will raise ques­tions about whether and how it will man­age to wel­come thou­sands of ath­letes, of­fi­cials and jour­nal­ists when the Games open in just weeks on Feb. 4.

On the one hand, there is a tremen­dous amount of na­tion­al pride and in­vest­ment rid­ing on the Olympics, and few would want a can­cel­la­tion, post­pone­ment or dra­mat­ic reimag­in­ing at this late stage. On the oth­er, Chi­nese au­thor­i­ties have adopt­ed dra­con­ian mea­sures through­out the pan­dem­ic un­der their pol­i­cy of seek­ing to stamp out every last case — and it’s hard to see how wel­com­ing so many peo­ple from abroad will square with that strat­e­gy.

That “ze­ro tol­er­ance” pol­i­cy, which has led to fre­quent lock­downs, uni­ver­sal mask­ing and mass test­ing, has not been en­tire­ly suc­cess­ful. It has re­sult­ed in mas­sive dis­rup­tions to trav­el and trade, but Bei­jing cred­its it with large­ly con­tain­ing the spread of the virus. Over­all, Chi­na has re­port­ed 4,636 deaths and 100,644 cas­es of COVID-19.

Xi’an — the cap­i­tal of Shaanxi province, famed for its im­pe­r­i­al relics, as well as a ma­jor cen­tre of in­dus­try — re­port­ed an­oth­er 63 lo­cal­ly trans­mit­ted cas­es on Thurs­day, push­ing the city’s to­tal to at least 211 over the past week.

Commuters wearing face masks to protect against COVID-19 exit a subway station in the central business district in Beijing, Thursday, Dec. 23, 2021. China ordered the lockdown of as many as 13 million people in neighbourhoods and workplaces in the northern city of Xi'an following a spike in coronavirus cases, setting off panic buying just weeks before the country hosts the Winter Olympic Games. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Commuters wearing face masks to protect against COVID-19 exit a subway station in the central business district in Beijing, Thursday, Dec. 23, 2021. China ordered the lockdown of as many as 13 million people in neighbourhoods and workplaces in the northern city of Xi'an following a spike in coronavirus cases, setting off panic buying just weeks before the country hosts the Winter Olympic Games. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Chi­na has al­so been deal­ing with a sub­stan­tial coro­n­avirus out­break in sev­er­al cities in the east­ern province of Zhe­jiang near Shang­hai, al­though iso­la­tion mea­sures there have been more nar­row­ly tar­get­ed.

“We are not re­ceiv­ing any new guests, and no present guests are al­lowed to leave the ho­tel,” said a re­cep­tion­ist at the Hant­i­ng Ho­tel in Xi’an, who on­ly gave her sur­name, Li.

Staff and guests are re­quired to be test­ed every two days, Li said. “There will be an im­pact on our busi­ness, and we have no idea how long it will last.”

The own­er of a lo­cal book­shop said he had closed 10 days be­fore, “fear­ing the wors­en­ing of the epi­dem­ic sit­u­a­tion.”

“I am now stay­ing at home watch­ing tele­vi­sion.” said the own­er, who gave on­ly his sur­name, Xi­ao.

Move­ment out­side his com­pound re­quires per­mis­sion from the lo­cal neigh­bour­hood com­mit­tee, he said. “I think the sit­u­a­tion will get bet­ter even­tu­al­ly, and I don’t wor­ry at all be­cause we have the gov­ern­ment be­hind us,” Xi­ao said.

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