Beijing recorded the highest number of COVID-19 cases in 18 months on Sunday, as the Chinese capital prepares to host the Winter Olympics (February 4-20).
These Olympics will take place in a “closed loop” for the participants, in order to prevent any contact between them and the local population.
China, which intends to pursue its zero-Covid strategy, has practically eradicated the epidemic on its soil since the spring of 2020 thanks to massive screenings, targeted confinements as soon as the first cases appear and a long quarantine on arrival on the territory.
But the country’s authorities are currently grappling with epidemic outbreaks in several cities across the country as well as within the “health bubble” of the Olympic Games.
Two days before the Lunar New Year, they are particularly on the alert, with millions of people returning to their towns and villages of origin to celebrate this holiday, the most important of the year in China, with their families.
Beijing recorded 20 new cases on Sunday, the highest number since June 2020, according to the National Health Commission.
The city authorities have placed certain residential complexes in confinement, while those of the Fengtai district, south-west of the capital, where most of the contamination has been recorded, have started to test around 2 million inhabitants.
The approximately 60,000 people who are part of the anti-covid health bubble put in place to avoid any contact between Olympic participants and the rest of the Chinese population are subjected to daily tests.
The organizers reported 36 cases linked to the Olympics on Saturday, bringing the number of cases recorded within this “bubble” to more than a hundred since its establishment on January 4.
The National Health Commission reported on Sunday 54 new cases registered across the country. The city of Hangzhou and the small town of Suifenhe, on the Russian border, are seeing an upsurge in cases.
Chinese authorities have partially quarantined the new city of Xiong’an, near Beijing, this week after the appearance of a few cases of COVID-19. Some 1.2 million inhabitants are prohibited from entering or leaving their neighborhood.