BEIJING: China’s capital Beijing was hit by a wave of panic buying on Thursday as residents rushed to stock up essentials amid fears of an impending Covid-19-related lockdown and banning of home deliveries beginning on Friday.
Residents in Beijing, especially in the hard hit Chaoyang district, lined up in long and tense queues on Thursday afternoon following speculation that the city will be going in for at least a three-day “quiet period”, which means staying at home without access to deliveries and only stepping out to be tested for Covid-19.
Shops and vegetable markets in many places were cleaned up by early evening.
Xu Hejian, a Beijing government spokesperson, denied the lockdown rumours and said the city’s some 22 million residents don’t need to be nervous about food supply and that deliveries would not be halted.
“It is unnecessary to hoard food,” he said, adding: “Residents don’t need to worry, the city’s operations won’t be affected.”
The rumours had fed into speculation among many in Beijing that the city is headed for a Shanghai-style lockdown despite the caseload – below 1,000 infections since April 22 – being tiny.
Xu, however, urged people to stay and work from home for the next three days.
The city further tightened Covid-19 curbs on Thursday, restricting access for taxis to sections of the capital with most cases of Covid-19.
As a result, millions of Beijing residents could not use taxi-hailing services with all cabs and cars operating on ride-hailing apps banned from entering the southern part of Chaoyang district and all of Fangshan and Shunyi districts.
That meant a large number of people have been cut off from accessing any kind of publicly available transport.
Many apartment complexes have also been sealed off because Covid-19 cases or close contacts of those infected have been tracked there.
The city government also said on Thursday that it will conduct three more rounds of consecutive mass testing for people living in the city’s 11 main districts and one economic zone through the weekend.
It means much of the city would have done daily tests for a week.
Shanghai, meanwhile, reported 1,305 new local asymptomatic coronavirus cases for May 11, up from 1,259 a day earlier, the city’s health authority said on Thursday, and logged 144 confirmed symptomatic ones, down from 228 the previous day.
It also reported five new Covid-19 deaths for Wednesday, down from seven a day earlier; the death toll now stands at 565.
Meanwhile, China would “strictly limit” unnecessary travel abroad by its citizens as part of its Covid-19 response, it was announced on Thursday.
Besides limiting foreign travel by Chinese citizens, officials should strictly prevent Covid-19 outbreaks caused by illegal entry into China, the National Immigration Administration said in a statement on Thursday.
China’s strict zero-Covid policy, criticised by the World Health Organisation on Tuesday, sees all positive cases and close contacts isolated in centralised quarantine sites or designated hotels.
The strategy comprises closed borders, strict quarantines, lockdowns and mass Covid-19 tests.
Though the policy has left China increasingly isolated as the rest of the world lives with Covid-19 and opens up, the ruling Communist Party of China has vowed to continue with it as evident in Shanghai and Beijing.