Authorities on Monday imposed lockdowns on tens of thousands of residents of northern China and asked Beijingers to limit their movements due to a rebound in Covid-19 cases in the country, a hundred days before start of the Beijing Winter Olympics.
China identified 39 new cases of Covid-19 on Monday and more than a hundred over the past week, most of these contaminations being linked to the movements of a group of tourists.
The Chinese authorities, which practice a policy of “zero tolerance” towards the virus, reacted swiftly, imposing restrictions and organizing mass screening campaigns in the affected regions.
In Beijing, where the Winter Olympics are due to start on February 4, a marathon in which some 30,000 runners were to participate on October 31 has been postponed indefinitely “so as to prevent the risk of epidemic transmission”, according to the organizers.
The Wuhan marathon, which was to have 26,000 participants last Sunday in the city where the new coronavirus was first identified at the end of 2019, was also canceled at the last moment for the same reasons.
A Beijing city official has asked residents to avoid “unnecessary” trips out of the city as well as large-scale gatherings for now.
Anyone arriving in Beijing from an area where Covid-19 cases have been identified must test negative, authorities said.
The new cases of Covid-19 have been detected in eleven provinces, mostly located in the north of the country.
In Ejin, a city in Inner Mongolia in the north of the country, around 35,000 people were placed in a two-week lockdown from Monday.
In some northern cities, including Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province, bus and taxi services have been suspended and tourist sites have been closed to visitors.
On Sunday, the authorities had already announced the suspension of organized tourist trips to five areas where cases of Covid-19 have been reported, including Beijing.