Street screenings rush to supermarkets to identify positive cases: Beijing jails under threat after a rare epidemic erupted in the Chinese capital on Monday. Almost all of the 25 million people have been confined since the beginning of April, and the La Shanghai Pekingese fear a situation where they will often have difficulty accessing food and non-Govt medical care. A total of 51 new deaths were announced by the Ministry of Health on Monday – a record in Chinese economic capital.
China has been facing an epidemic since March, affecting almost the entire country in varying degrees. She tries to overcome it with her zero govt strategy. These include prisons and mass screenings to quickly diagnose and isolate infected people.
In Beijing on Monday, long queues, sometimes hundreds of residents, were swarmed by snakes between sidewalks and shopping malls before arriving at makeshift screening tents, where officers in full protective clothing conducted PCR tests. These sites are located in the Chaong District east of the capital. With a population of about 3.5 million, it is most affected by this epidemic wave. “If they find a slightly positive case, the whole area could be affected,” the 25-year-old office worker, who was preparing for the test, told AFP Yaw Leaming.
“We are afraid”
The Ministry of Health on Monday registered 19 new positive cases in Beijing, bringing the total to several dozen since last week. Municipal officials warned the situation was “serious and difficult”. If the town hall has not yet mentioned the prison, Beijing, alerted by the example of Shanghai, will rush to supermarkets and online sites from Sunday to strengthen their food stocks.
“People are worried about the situation,” Ms Wang, 48, told AFP. She went to a convenience store when she received a text message saying she needed to take a screening test. “We were afraid it would become like Shanghai (…) We took vegetables, rice and fruit,” he explains, having enough food for himself for a week.
The city, with a population of 22 million, is currently reeling from a shortage of new produce. However, just like the brick and mortar supermarkets that line the entrance, eggs, meat, oil, fruits and vegetables are widely available for purchase on online sites on Mondays.
Barriers and fences
Nearly thirty residential complexes in Beijing, i.e. a small part of the population, are currently subject to some form of imprisonment. A few days before the May 1 holiday, the town hall ordered travel agencies to stop group excursions into the capital, whose suburbs are famous for its mountains and lakes. However there is normal life in Beijing. Shops, restaurants and theaters are still open.
But markets are worried: Chinese stock markets fell on Monday in Shanghai (-5.13%), Shenzhen (-6.48%) and Hong Kong (-3.85%). The capital, the seat of communist power, has not been a serious epidemic since the beginning of the Govt, and it is receiving very special attention. Any traveler coming from the provinces must submit a negative PCR test of less than 48 hours.
However, the situation in Beijing is not comparable to that in Shanghai, which has been facing its worst eruption since the eruption and has recorded half a million positive cases since March 1. No one knows how long this harsh imprisonment will last, which will greatly affect the morale of the citizens and the Chinese economy. In some districts, high metal barriers or fences have been installed at the entrances of buildings to prevent people from leaving. But a fire in a residential building on Saturday reinforced residents’ fears over the ban, which has drawn much criticism on social media.