Eva Fu
January 15, 2022 Updated: January 16, 2022
A woman people ride on a metro car next to a logo for Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics mascot Bing Dwen Dwen during rush hour in Beijing on Jan. 13, 2022. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)
The fast-spreading Omicron
variant has hit China’s capital Beijing amid emerging COVID-19 clusters across the country, raising
pressure on the regime to keep the virus at bay just three weeks before the
city is due to stage the Olympic games.
Beijing on Jan. 15 reported
its first locally transmitted Omicron case from Haidian—the second-largest
district located in the city’s northwest. The officials responded by sealing
off 17 “risk areas” associated with the COVID-19 case. All residents from the
neighborhood compound where the person lives have temporarily been barred from
leaving their homes.
Omicron’s detection in
Beijing comes as cities across China have ratcheted up vigilance against the
virus ahead of the Beijing Winter
Olympics, which are scheduled to
start on Feb. 4. The variant is posing a fresh challenge for the regime, whose
officials have doubled down on its zero-tolerance approach that had been a nationwide effort to bring the Delta variant
under control.
Over 20 million Chinese
residents in at least five cities are under lockdown. In Xi’an, harsh virus containment policies
have caused locals to struggle for food and the dying have been unable to obtain medical help. Similar lockdown measures in port cities, such
as Ningbo, also
threaten to disrupt the global supply chain.
Despite the stringent control
efforts, over 14 provinces across China have reported Omicron cases as of
Saturday, according to He Qinghua, a senior official with China’s National
Health Commission’s Disease Prevention and Control Bureau. The official didn’t
disclose the exact infection numbers, but Mi Feng, a spokesperson for the
commission, described the situation as “grim.”
China is “facing the two-fold challenge” from Delta and Omicron, He said at a Saturday press conference, noting that with the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year holiday—which coincides with the Beijing Olympics—the risks of COVID-19 transmission are even higher.
The megacity of Tianjin,
just a two-hour drive from Beijing, has also been sealing off residential
communities, triggering panic buying among local residents wishing to avoid the same pains as
those inflicted on Xi’an resident, where the Dec. 26, 2021, lockdown remains in
force.
Omicron cases linked to
Tianjin are officially reported to have risen to 400 as of Saturday, spilling into
cities as far as Anyang city in central China, and the northeastern city of
Dalian.
In December, Beijing
implemented travel curbs restricting people from entering the city if the area
they are traveling from has one or more local infections in the past two weeks.
Zhuhai, a city in the
southeastern Chinese province of Guangdong bordering Macau, has canceled all
flights to Beijing and public bus routes after announcing seven cases of
Omicron.
Chinese officials also
confirmed local Omicron infections in Shanghai on Saturday. The night before,
videos shared on social media showed college students fleeing their campuses to
avoid being locked inside.
“So scary,” one man said
after he and others slipped out from the cordoned school entrance. “I almost
didn’t make it.”
To avoid arousing suspicion
from the security, he said he decided to only leave with his laptop in a
backpack and shipped his clothing before he left
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