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Coronavirus pandemic
ChinaScience

Coronavirus: Guangdong hit with travel restrictions as outbreak worsens

  • Anyone who wants to leave the province must show a negative test result from within 72 hours before departure
  • There were 20 new cases on Sunday, with fast-spreading strain first identified in India found in Guangzhou

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Mass screening is under way in Guangzhou’s Liwan district, where residents have been told to get tested for Covid-19 every two days. Photo: AP
Mimi LauandGuo Rui
Health authorities have imposed travel restrictions in Guangdong and mass testing is under way as they scramble to contain a Covid-19 outbreak in the southern Chinese province, where a fast-spreading strain first found in India has been detected.

Twenty new locally transmitted cases were confirmed on Sunday – 18 in Guangzhou and two in neighbouring Foshan, the Guangdong Health Commission said. That brings the total to 47 cases, 21 of them asymptomatic, since the outbreak began on May 21.

A lockdown is in place in the worst-hit area, a district of Guangzhou, and from 10pm on Monday anyone who wants to leave the province must show a negative test result from within 72 hours before departure. Nearly 500 flights had been cancelled at airports in Guangzhou and Shenzhen – the third city to report cases in the latest outbreak – as of Monday morning.

Meanwhile, residents of some Guangzhou districts have been told to get tested and large-scale screening is also under way in Foshan and Shenzhen. Guangzhou officials have also suspended the city’s public Covid-19 vaccination programme to focus on priority groups.

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China’s southern Guangdong province in high gear to quash Covid-19 outbreak

China’s southern Guangdong province in high gear to quash Covid-19 outbreak
China’s cabinet, the State Council, has sent disease prevention and control experts to Guangdong to help with the outbreak, National Health Commission spokesman Mi Feng said on Monday. The provincial Communist Party boss, Li Xi, has also been highly visible checking on quarantine arrangements and the vaccination roll-out. Curbing the spread of the virus – which has been largely under control in China – is a priority for leaders ahead of the party’s centenary in July and a key session next year that could see a leadership reshuffle.

In Guangzhou, home to more than 18 million people, authorities have locked down parts of Liwan district, where there have been 21 locally transmitted cases. Public venues have been closed and residents subject to stay-at-home orders must rely on government deliveries of groceries and essential items.

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