Beijing | Street screenings to identify positive cases, rush to supermarkets to stock up on food: Beijing lives on Monday under the threat of confinement after a rare epidemic outbreak in the Chinese capital.
Residents fear a scenario à la Shanghai, where almost all of the 25 million inhabitants have been confined since the beginning of April, often with difficulties in accessing food and non-Covid medical care.
A total of 51 new deaths were still announced there on Monday by the Ministry of Health – a record in the Chinese economic capital.
China has been facing an epidemic outbreak since March that affects almost the entire country to varying degrees. She tries to overcome it with her zero Covid strategy.
This consists in particular of confinements as soon as a few cases appear and of massive tests to quickly identify infected people and isolate them.
In Beijing on Monday, long lines, sometimes hundreds of residents, snaked between sidewalks and shopping malls before arriving at makeshift screening tents, where officers in full protective suits conducted PCR tests.
These sites are located in the Chaoyang district, in the east of the capital. With a population of around 3.5 million, the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is the most affected by this epidemic wave.
“If they find the slightest positive case, the whole area could be affected” and put in confinement, told AFP Yao Leiming, a 25-year-old office worker who is preparing to be tested.
” We are scared “
The Health Ministry reported 19 new positive cases in Beijing on Monday, bringing the total to several dozen since last week.
Municipal authorities warned that the situation was “serious and difficult”. According to them, urgent measures are needed to stem the spread of the virus.
If the town hall has not mentioned confinement so far, the Beijingers, made cautious by the example of Shanghai, have been rushing since Sunday to supermarkets and online platforms to strengthen their stocks of food products.
“People are apprehensive of the situation (…) Everyone is buying products for fear that stocks will run out,” Ms. Wang, a 48-year-old resident, told AFP.
She said she went to a neighborhood grocery store on Sunday as soon as she received an SMS on her phone telling her that she had to take a Covid test.
“We are afraid that things will become like in Shanghai (…) We took vegetables, rice and fruit,” she said, saying she had enough food for a week.
The city does not currently suffer from a shortage of fresh produce or basic necessities.
Eggs, meat, oil, vegetables and fruit are still widely available for purchase on Monday on online platforms, as in brick-and-mortar supermarkets, where queues have however formed at the entrance.
Barriers
Sports halls have started to cancel classes or even close. But life is largely normal in Beijing with shops, restaurants, cinemas and bars remaining open for the time being.
The capital, seat of communist power, has not suffered a serious epidemic outbreak since the start of the Covid and is the subject of very special attention.
Any traveler coming from the provinces must now present a negative PCR test dating back less than 48 hours.
The situation in Beijing, however, is disproportionate to that of Shanghai, which is facing its worst epidemic outbreak in two years and has already recorded half a million positive cases since the 1er March.
This harsh confinement, which no one knows how long it will last, weighs heavily on the morale of the inhabitants and on the Chinese economy.
In some districts, high metal barriers or fences have even been installed at the door of the buildings, in order to prevent people from leaving.
But the fire on Saturday in a residential building reinforced residents’ fear of being trapped by these barriers, much criticized on social networks.