The authorities of Chengdu (center) announced that the city, with more than 21 million inhabitants, will begin a confinement this Thursday to tackle “an extremely complex and serious pandemic situation”.
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The local government declared in its official account on the Wechat social network that “all residents will have to remain in their homes in principle” from 6 pm (local time) and that each household will be able to “designate a member” to leave to buy groceries, as long as the person has a negative PCR test carried out in the previous 24 hours.
Citizens who “perform basic tasks for the operation of the city” and “epidemic prevention” will be able to enter and leave the neighborhoods with a special electronic pass.
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Citizens who carry out basic tasks for the operation of the city and prevention against the epidemic will be able to enter and leave the neighborhoods with a special electronic pass
Likewise, the authorities prohibit the departure of residents of the Chengdu municipality, except in “exceptional cases”, which will only be approved if the person has a negative PCR test in the previous 24 hours.
Chengdu, with 21.1 million inhabitants and a municipality larger than Puerto Rico, will carry out PCR tests on all its residents between this Thursday and Sunday.
Public taxi and bicycle services are suspended, although the city has not decreed the paralysis of public transport, but rather an “adjustment of its frequency”.
The city, capital of Sichuan province, one of the most populous in the country, is one of the main economic poles in central and western China.
The city has also been in the news this summer due to a heat wave unprecedented in decades and a drought that led to the limitation of energy use in some industries.
Chengdu had already imposed selective confinement in recent days in neighborhoods affected by outbreaks that left 106 new symptomatic cases and 51 asymptomatic on Wednesday, according to official data.
Recently, the Asian country has registered outbreaks in various parts of its geography, ranging from the southern tropical island of Hainan, through Sichuan itself, to the remote western region of Tibet, which had not registered cases for two years.
Already for more than two years, China remains clinging to her “zero covid” policy: since the outbreaks registered in spring, The inhabitants of large Chinese cities have to undergo several weekly PCR tests to be able to enter public places and confinements are decreed in areas where a case is detected.
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Beyond the massive PCR tests and the confinements, the country maintains its borders practically closed to the outside: since March 2020, China has been closed to tourism and only national travelers and some foreigners with valid residence permits or non-tourist visas they can access, after which a quarantine awaits them in a hotel paid for by themselves and designated by the authorities.
In China, since the start of the pandemic, 243,449 people have been infected and 5,226 have died, although the total number of infected excludes the asymptomatic, according to official accounts.
EFE
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