China Appears to Warn Extended Lockdowns Are Coming Nationwide

Several Chinese cities appear to have recently prepared their populaces for potential Chinese coronavirus lockdowns in the coming days, indicating the country may see a nationwide spate of lockdowns in the coming weeks, the state-run Global Times reported Monday.

“Considering the lessons from Shanghai’s response to the Omicron resurgence, a number of provinces and cities across China are taking more decisive preventive measures to screen out possible COVID-19 [Chinese coronavirus] infections through massive nucleic acid testing,” the newspaper observed April 11.

“Some cities are accelerating the construction of Fangcang makeshift hospitals to be well prepared for potential new outbreaks, echoing the country’s dynamic-zero strategy,” the Chinese Communist Party-run Global Times relayed.

The newspaper named specific examples of cities enacting the proactive epidemic measures, such as the Hubei province cities of Yichang and Jingzhou, which are located a short distance from one another.

In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, a view of the an area of the Shanghai New International Expo Center converted to hold when completed up to 15,000 beds to quarantine mild cases and asymptomatic carriers amid the latest coronavirus resurgence in Shanghai on March 30, 2022. (Ding Ting/Xinhua via AP)

“After Central China’s Hubei Province reported 33 asymptomatic cases on Sunday [April 10], cities in the province such as Yichang and Jingzhou began citywide nucleic acid testing on Monday [April 11],” the Global Times reported.

In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, a patient who has recovered from coronavirus, is disinfected as he leaves a makeshift hospital converted from Shanghai Convention & Exhibition Center of International Sourcing in Shanghai on Saturday, April 9, 2022. (Jin Liwang/Xinhua via AP)

The publication suggested Yichang government authorities ordered all 3.8 million of the city’s residents to undergo Chinese coronavirus testing as a precautionary measure, as Yichang had not reported any new cases of the disease in recent days.

A medical worker conducts coronavirus tests for residents after a confirmed case was found in the community on Sunday, April 10, 2022, in Shanghai. (AP Photo/Chen Si)

China has experienced a resurgence of the Chinese coronavirus across the country over the past few months. One of the nation’s latest outbreaks sparked in Shanghai in early March. Chinese Communist Party officials ordered all of Shanghai’s nearly 26 million residents to observe a stay-at-home edict on April 5, just a few days after locking down one half of the city at a time from March 28 to April 5 to conduct mass testing for the Chinese coronavirus. The sequence of events during Shanghai’s current anti-epidemic battle suggests that other cities, such as Yichang and Jingzhou, may be headed toward lockdowns in the near future.

The Global Times on April 11 cited another example of a city that may enter a Chinese coronavirus-related lockdown in the near future.

“After neighboring Jize county, North China’s Hebei Province reported some 40 asymptomatic cases in early April, the Nanhe district of Xingtai city put the entire region on standstill. That has been the case for nearly two weeks, with the district locking down residential communities, suspending business and launching seven rounds of nucleic acid testing,” the newspaper observed.

The Global Times said it “learned from a local official that in the face of pressure from neighboring regions, Nanhe district acted quickly to avoid the spread of Omicron within the city.”

“Other urban regions of Xingtai city also started to collect information of residents as preparation for mass nucleic acid testing if the neighboring region’s epidemic expands,” the publication revealed.

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