Workers in Shanghai’s Changning district erect a fence on October 7, 2022, around a residential area locked after reports of new Covid cases.
Hector Retamal | Afp | beautiful pictures
BEIJING – New Covid cases are spiked across mainland China, prompting many local governments to tighten controls on movement.
About 4.8% of China’s gross domestic product was negatively impacted by Covid’s control measures as of Monday, according to a model from Nomura. This is up from 4.3% a week ago.
Three of Shanghai’s central districts on Monday ordered entertainment venues such as internet cafes to temporarily close, according to the official announcement.
On Tuesday, many schools in the central Chinese city of Xi’an canceled face-to-face classes for most students, according to a local news agency. A hashtag about the sudden closure was one of the most trending entries on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media platform.
The Xi’an Department of Education did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The measures follow the week-long National Day holiday ending on Friday, during which “China’s overall Covid situation appears to have materially deteriorated,” said China’s Chief of China Economics Nomura, Ting Lu and a team said in a note Monday.
The report points to the lockdown since October 4 of a popular tourist city in southern Yunnan province, Xinjiang’s ban on people leaving the area due to the local Covid outbreak, and a lockdown in Haikou City, Hainan Province on October 6.
The seven-day moving average of locally transmitted Covid cases with symptoms more than doubled from 136 on October 1 to 305 on October 9, Nomura analysts said. Nomura analysts said.
Mainland China reported 427 new symptomatic Covid cases on Monday in more than 20 provincial regions of the country. When adding asymptomatic infections, the daily number of cases surpassed 2,000 and came from nearly all 31 provincial-level regions.
According to China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism, domestic tourism revenue during this month’s holiday – China’s last holiday of the year – reached 287.21 billion yuan ($40.45 billion), according to China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Ministry of Culture and Tourism of China. This is down from last year and still below 2019 levels, the ministry said.
However, online booking platform Trip.com says nearly two-thirds of holiday orders are for trips or nearby stays, with spending up 30% year-on-year. .
Strict requirements for virus testing and the risk of not being able to return home have discouraged long-distance domestic travel over the land.
That contrasts with an increase in foreign travel as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea have joined other countries in easing virus testing and quarantine rules.
Stick to zero-Covid
This October is a particularly politically sensitive time for China as President Xi Jinping is expected to consolidate his power at an important meeting of the ruling Communist Party of China next week.
On the eve of that congress, central government authorities affirmed their dynamic zero-Covid policy in an article Monday in the party’s newspaper, People’s Daily.
State broadcaster CCTV summarized the article in its nightly news program by highlighting the need for a more targeted approach to Covid-19 control.
“We must remain vigilant against the spread of the pandemic, overcome the crippling mindset, the fatigue of war, the mentality of seizing the opportunity and the attitude of giving it up – and conscientiously do the work of prevention. fight and control the pandemic,” the announcer said. to CNBC’s Chinese translation.
