China Imposes Massive Travel Restrictions to...
12 Minutes Read
• China has imposed massive travel restrictions to contain the spread of the Delta variant.
• All 31 provincial-level regions in the Chinese mainland have urged citizens not to go to medium and high-risk areas for COVID-19 or leave the provinces where they live unless it is necessary.
• Twenty-three railway stations have halted ticket sales for Beijing-bound passengers departing from these stations.
• All flights at the airports in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu, and Yangzhou have been suspended.
Image: www.news.cn
Massive travel restrictions
All 31 provincial-level regions in the Chinese mainland have urged citizens not to go to medium and high-risk areas for COVID-19 or leave the provinces where they live unless it is necessary.
Twenty-three railway stations have halted ticket sales for Beijing-bound passengers departing from these stations, said Cui Wei, an official with China Railway Beijing Group Co. Ltd. on Tuesday. The cities include: Zhengzhou, Nanjing, Yangzhou, Shenyang, Dalian, Huai'an, Suqian, Xiamen, Shangqiu, Huanggang, Jingzhou, Changsha, Zhuzhou, Xiangtan, Zhangjiajie, Yiyang, Xiangxi Prefecture, Haikou, Chengdu, Luzhou, Mianyang, Yibin, and Dehong Prefecture.
Passengers who have purchased tickets are still able to travel at a later date or ask to be refunded, customer service staff confirmed.
Travel agencies online and offline should keep track of epidemic information of destinations and not send groups into or receive groups from areas with medium and high COVID-19 risks, said a circular issued Tuesday by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
All flights at the airports in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu, and Yangzhou have been suspended. Nine long-distance bus stations in Nanjing and public bus services in Yangzhou were also suspended.
The Chinese mainland on Monday reported 61 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases, the National Health Commission said in its daily report on Tuesday. Forty-five cases were reported in Jiangsu, six in Hunan, three in Hubei, two each in Henan and Yunnan, and one each in Beijing, Shanghai, and Fujian, according to the commission.
China urged to fill loopholes
Residential communities - where more than 10,000 residents live - around the Guoxing community in Beijing's Haidian district have been locked down with public places in the area being closed. Nucleic acid testing has also kicked off and 4,500 samples have been collected, Beijing health officials said at a press conference on Monday. The capital city has reported several local confirmed cases associated with infected people returning from outside.
Wuhan, capital of Central China's Hubei Province, also reported seven local COVID-19 cases on Monday. The city hadn't reported any local infections since June 2020.
The outbreak, which is rapidly sweeping through the nation, has exposed loopholes in Chinese cities' daily anti-epidemic work, which sounded an alarm to the country. Chinese experts said it showed staff members at airports and designated hospitals did not conduct strict surveillance and testing of cargo and objects. They stressed that China must fix the loopholes; otherwise the country would be hit by more new mutations, as long as the overseas epidemic is not over.
Wang Guangfa, a respiratory expert at Peking University First Hospital, said airports or ports should increase the frequency of daily testing and strengthen their scrutiny of people whose work involves close connections with imported cases.
A flight from Russia was identified as the source of the infections in Nanjing. Airport cleaning staff members were infected when cleaning the cabin.
Controlling the infection source and cutting off the infection channel are the two main means to prevent and control any epidemic resurgence in China. If the people involved fail to do a good job in daily health monitoring and protection, they will become infection sources, Wang said.
Image: VCG
Delta variant + vaccination
Echoing Wang, Yang Zhanqiu, deputy director of the pathogen biology department at Wuhan University, said that "the outbreak in Nanjing showed that the local authorities failed to properly handle the feces of coronavirus-infected patients or trash left on planes that carried confirmed cases. This reflected significant loopholes in the management of those places."
Other health experts also noted that Nanjing has been comparatively slow in taking action and epidemiological investigations, but fortunately the city is still in the early stage of the outbreak.
As for the infection chain in Zhengzhou, Wang Songqiang, director of the Zhengzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a press conference on Saturday that the majority of the infections were related to the Sixth People's Hospital of Zhengzhou, a designated hospital for imported COVID-19 infections. The infections involve cleaning workers, medical staffers and in-patients. It exposed the loopholes of hospitals in the implementation of infection control.
Zhengzhou reported 13 confirmed cases and 50 asymptomatic carriers as of 6 pm on Monday. The first two patients were found to be related to the patient who returned from Myanmar and they were all infected with the Delta variant, authorities from Zhengzhou said at Monday's press conference.
In face of the Delta variant, in addition to strict epidemic control measures, experts also pointed out that faster mass vaccination is another promising move, not only in China but also in the US.
In China, the Delta variant was first identified in southern Guangdong in June, and also in Southwest China's Yunnan. However, the experiences of dealing with the local outbreaks showed that vaccinated individuals will show comparatively milder symptoms and have a lower chance of deterioration.
Advancing mass vaccinations to reach herd immunity is also a promising method in China as Delta variant cases surge, given the vaccination rate is still not enough high.
China's top epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan said during a speech in Guangzhou on Saturday that China needs to vaccinate about 83 percent of its population to achieve herd immunity. He also revealed that all the 13 severe cases infected with the Delta variant in Guangzhou COVID-19 outbreak in May did not get inoculated.
Real-time travel restrictions updates + Health codes
We currently would strongly advise NOT to travel anywhere. If you do so, click here to check the real-time COVID travel restrictions updates. Call airlines, hotels, airports, or train stations. We also recommend you to check with your hotel in advance, as some restrict foreigners, and others (especially in smaller cities) require a recent COVID test. Call, and then call again.
One of the most important tools for COVID tracing in China are definitely the various Health Codes, which often have to be shown at train stations, airports, malls, office buildings and shops around the city before entering premises. Click here for the Health Code guide of China's major cities.
Source: Xinhua, Global Times
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-08/04/c_1310105658.htm
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202108/1230353.shtml
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