Amid fears of COVID-19 spread, a growing number of Chinese cities are offering financial incentives and other perks to persuade residents, especially migrant workers, not to travel home for family reunions ahead of the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday.
What happens when the city government orders residents to be isolated at centralized quarantine venues, but does not make any plans for the pets left behind?
It’s almost been a week since Tonghua, a small city in China’s northeastern Jilin Province, went into lockdown to fight an ongoing resurgence of new COVID-19 cases in China. But instead of the deadly virus, the city’s 300,000 have been struggling to keep hunger at bay after being sealed inside their homes.
Chinese state media, and even some of China’s top scientists, are promoting messages to undermine confidence in non-Chinese vaccines. At the same time, Beijing is again spreading conspiracy theories about the origins of COVID-19.
New COVID-19 restrictions are going to make for a miserable Lunar Year for many of China’s poors. For some, it will be the second consecutive year without a return home for the traditional family celebration.
Shijiazhuang is currently dealing with the largest outbreak of COVID-19 in China in months, with more than 300 cases. Government officials have instituted strict lockdown measures, with the promise that Hebei, its province, would be "the moat to safeguard the political security of Beijing." What is it like living in Shijiazhuang during this time?
CoronaVac, a vaccine by Sinovac Biotech, may only be a little more than 50% effective in preventing COVID-19, according to clinical trial results in Brazil. While this clears the threshold for regulatory approval, it is a disappointing result for countries that already bought tens of millions of doses of the product.
“We were notified that if one person in the entire apartment complex tested positive, then all residents would have to do an in-house 14-day quarantine,” writes Todd Jackson, an American in Shijiazhuang, Hebei, which went into “wartime mode” this week to battle a COVID-19 outbreak. All in all, though, residents have complied with authorities, without much panic or pushback.
The province surrounding Beijing is responding rapidly to a new outbreak of COVID-19, hoping to stop the spread of the virus before travel for Chinese New Year commences.