Half of quarantine centers closed over the weekend in Shanghai. Sign of a decline in infections, even if the return to normal life still seems far away for the confined. Same thing in Beijing where health restrictions were further tightened this Sunday.
From our correspondent in Beijing,
If the loudspeakers have learned to say thank you, the residents of the great district of Chaoyang in Beijing already do not see the weeks pass anymore. ” Please follow the health instructions, please wear a mask “, dwell on the speakers placed at the entrance of these blue and white tents that are now found on all street corners of the Chinese capital. For eleven dayspassing through these temporary PCR test stations has become a daily ritual for most Beijingers, including weekends.
Targeted containments
Apart from the birds that we hear more than usual, the closure of businesses and the disappearance of car traffic which seems to have been sucked into a black hole, this Sunday in Beijing could almost seem ordinary. Young cyclists smile at the blue sky in the old streets. Children play ball in the green spaces of residences without cases of Covid, while their parents try to take out bowls and chopsticks on an unfolded tablecloth in the open air. Gatherings of family and friends are discouraged in times of epidemic alert, but some sympathetic guardians look the other way. Knowing that anyway, this tolerance only applies to multi-tested residents.
Outside the community housing estates, everything is closed! Picnics are prohibited in the few parks in the capital that remain open and only some of the restaurants offer take-out meals. Take advantage of sunny days, when the containment measures can fall at any moment: the rumor of a bell in the capital triggered a rush on the supermarkets this week. Generalized confinement is not currently on the agenda, but it does not take much to find yourself locked up.
For three days, Lionel has been forced to stay at home. This Frenchman living in the Anzhen district of Beijing had the bad idea of entering a shopping center last Sunday. A positive case had passed before him. The blocking of his cell phone immediately triggered the “big data”, followed by a phone call from the health brigades two days later.
” I don’t know exactly who called mehe confides. They just asked me if I had entered the mall. Then they told me not to leave my apartment and to do self-tests every day. » Lionel is not the most to be pitied. ” It’s a basic containment as a precaution, my door is not blocked and if all goes well I will be released tonighthe continues. On the other hand, I have friends whose residence has been completely closed. They receive supplies from neighborhood committees and they are not allowed to be delivered. »
Recurring confinements, but for the moment targeted and adapted according to the case. The authorities absolutely want to avoid theshanghai sanitary escalation and the disastrous image it created for epidemic management with “Chinese characteristics”. ” The likelihood that the current infectious situation in Beijing will turn into a large-scale epidemic is very low. “, said this Saturday Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese center for disease control and prevention.
Doctors mobilized for the tests
Beijing is not Shanghai. The authorities repeat the mantra to each other in order to ward off fate, while reinforcing the restrictive measures. The staff of the prestigious Tsinghua University must now live in a “closed loop”. Like factory workers and students, professors and administrative staff are no longer required to leave campus. ” The epidemic situation in Beijing remains serious and complex, and the multiplication of infectious outbreaks adds uncertainty to epidemic control “, according to local authorities. The measures are targeted, but increasingly extensive.
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This Sunday, public transport, taxis and deliveries were suspended in Fangshan, in the southwest of the Chinese capital. Residents will in turn be forced to telecommute on Monday, following the discovery of a cluster in a local express courier company. In addition, dozens of neighborhoods are classified as so-called “sealed” zones in Beijing. The red dots corresponding to new positive cases appear every day on the apps, but it is difficult to accurately count the number of confined people. For the day this Saturday, 33 new cases of confirmed infections have been reported, according to official figures.
Since April 22, just over 1,000 patients have been admitted to designated hospitals in the capital for Covid treatment. ” For three weeks, contaminations have been in decline in Shanghainotes an idle Beijing waitress, but here we don’t really know what will happen tomorrow. The Chinese economic capital closed half of its isolation centers for asymptomatic people on Saturday and health authorities are hoping for a return at “social zero” on May 20, in other words, no new cases of contamination outside quarantines and hospitals. But for now, the vast majority of Shanghainese remain confined. ” This is not the case here, but like Shanghainese we are now struggling to see the doctors who are all mobilized for Covid tests, even vaccine reminders are difficult to achieve these days “, continues the young woman who can not get an appointment with her gynecologist.
Lionel wants to be positive, knowing that the situation can always deteriorate: “ We stayed 21 days confined during the Olympic Gamesremembers the latter. My residence had been surrounded by sheet metal (note blue metal palisades are installed around “sealed areas” in Beijing), following the discovery of a positive case in the building next door. We had watched the games on TV, but we had seen the fireworks from the window. »
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