The port megalopolis of Tianjin, east of Beijing, launched a Covid screening campaign on Sunday among its 14 million inhabitants. Twenty infections have been reported since Saturday, including two Omicron cases. The authorities do not want to leave anything to chance, the city is 30 minutes by train from the Chinese capital which awaits the Olympics.
From our correspondent in Beijing, Stephane Lagarde
Cries, sometimes jostling in the food departments, the images return to each new source of infection on Chinese social networks. Because here, the health response does not change. Same scenario since the start of the pandemic. After the discovery of two local cases of contamination on Saturday in Tianjin, the authorities immediately brandished the “Zero Covid” strategy: PCR at the foot of the towers last night, tracing and confinement of 28 community areas.
Result: 18 new infections were reported this Sunday, all contact cases of the first two, in this case a primary school student and a childcare worker from the same district. This school cluster would have resulted in contamination over three generations, according to the local center for disease control and prevention.
Closure of metro stations and food emergency plan
As always, the suddenness of the restrictive measures provoked various reactions. Some take the matter with humor: “ I couldn’t wait to catch Omicron. That way, I could have taken at least two weeks off for Covid, but realized that if I was positive it would be very likely that the government would take my dog away for euthanasia and I don’t want to don’t let that happen “Writes a user on Twitter who describes himself as a” dog lover “.
The Tianjin Trade Commission has activated an emergency plan to ensure a stable supply of food and basic necessities. The stocks of rice, noodles and oil can last a month, according to the statements of an official of the same commission, quoted by the SCMP. Beginning of November, the government had invited the population to make reserves for the winter in essential goods.
Zero Covid to the test
Genome sequencing shows that the two Omicron cases are related. For the moment, we do not know the origin of the transmission. As a precaution, several metro stations were closed, as well as bus lines. Residents have also been asked not to leave the city, unless there is a compelling reason.
With Omicron, “Zero Covid” is being put to the test and the new variant constitutes a test for the Chinese strategy to fight the epidemic. Tianjin is indeed two hours away by road, thirty minutes by TGV, from the Beijing Olympics. Since the summer of 2020, this is where Chinese diplomacy has received senior foreign officials. It is also one of the main gateways to the Chinese capital, but the latter is closely watched. To enter, you must present a negative test of less than 48 hours and, beyond the confined, residents close to risk areas have certainly seen their health pass changed to orange on their smartphones, preventing them from moving around.
In the rest of China, 165 confirmed cases, including 92 local, have been reported nationwide, including 30 in the city of Xi’an, in the northwest of the country where 13 million people have since been confined. now two weeks and one in Shenzhen, opposite Hongkong where a drone choreography yesterday invited residents to be tested. Over the weekend, a Chinese health official announced that more than 1.21 billion Chinese had been fully immunized, evening 86% of the population of the world’s second-largest economy.