Beijing kicks off fresh round of COVID tests as Shanghai postpones crucial exams

By Brenda Goh

SHANGHAI (Reuters) -China’s capital Beijing kicked off a fresh round of mass testing for COVID-19 on Saturday and shut more bus routes and metro stations, as it seeks to avert the fate of Shanghai, where millions of residents have been locked down for over a month.

The draconian movement curbs on Shanghai, an economic and financial hub, have caused frustration among its 25 million residents and triggered rare protests over issues such as access to food and medical care, loss of income and crowded as well as unsanitary conditions at central quarantine centres.

While some people have been let out for light and air in recent weeks, residents for the most part say they still cannot leave their housing compounds.

Beijing is striving to avoid an explosion in cases like that of Shanghai, China’s largest city, by conducting rounds of mass testing, banning restaurant dining-in services in multiple districts and shutting more than 60 subway stations, about 15% of the network.

Shanghai cases have fallen for eight days and the city says its outbreak is under effective control, allowing it to shut some of the makeshift hospitals it raced to build as case numbers ballooned.

But authorities have also indicated that a full easing is still far off, warning against complacency to stick to China’s zero-COVID goal.

Underscoring that expectation, Shanghai officials on Saturday postponed the city’s “gaokao” university entrance exam by a month to early July. The last time that happened was in 2020, during the initial coronavirus outbreak.

The city’s top Communist Party official, Li Qiang, a close ally of President Xi Jinping, told a Friday government meeting that it was “necessary to issue military orders at all levels, and take more resolute and powerful actions to overcome the great war and great tests,” according to an official statement.

The number of infections in Shanghai outside areas under lockdown – a gauge of whether the city can further reopen – fell to 18 on Friday from 23 the day before. Total new cases declined slightly to around 4,000, data released on Saturday showed.

Shanghai is also building thousands of permanent PCR testing stations, in line with other cities, as China looks to make regular testing a feature of everyday life.

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China’s COVID policy is increasingly out of step with much of the rest of the world, where governments have eased restrictions, or dropped them altogether, in a bid to live with COVID even as infections spread.

But Chinese leaders this week reiterated their resolve to battle the virus, threatening action against critics of their strict measures. Beyond Shanghai, dozens of cities have imposed full or partial lockdowns, relaxing and tightening curbs at various times.

The measures are exacting a mounting economic toll that has fuelled complaints from global industry groups and businesses at home.

China’s auto association on Friday estimated that sales plunged 48% in April from a year earlier, as zero-COVID policies shut factories, limited traffic to showrooms and put the brakes on spending in the world’s largest car market.

In Shanghai, although the government has provided guidelines on how companies can restart operations, a survey of Japanese firms in late April found most still struggling to restart due to the onerous requirements.

Since Friday, organizers have cancelled, postponed or relocated a slate of major international sporting events set to take place in China in the second half of the year, including the Asian Games set for Hangzhou in September and Diamond League athletics meets originally scheduled for Shanghai on July 30 and Shenzhen on Aug. 6.

The moves, which followed a government meeting on Thursday chaired by Xi that called for doubling down on the zero-COVID approach, defy a global sporting calendar that has largely returned to normal.

On Saturday, Beijing kicked off the first of three new rounds of daily testing in five districts including the biggest, Chaoyang, home to embassies and large offices.

Beijing officials said that while they had figured out the main COVID transmission chains, they still believed there were hidden infection sources in society and that the city could not lower its guard.

The capital reported 45 new symptomatic COVID-19 cases for Friday, down from 55 a day earlier. It recorded eight asymptomatic cases, which China counts separately, versus 17 a day earlier.

(Reporting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Stephen Coates and William Mallard)