Tag: Coronavirus Risks and Safety Concerns

iPhone Factory Protest Challenges China’s ‘Zero Covid’ Rules

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In an iPhone factory in central China, thousands of workers clashed with riot police and tore down barricades. In the southern city of Guangzhou, protesters broke out of locked-down buildings to confront health workers and ransack food provisions. And online, many Chinese raged at the authorities after the death of a 4-month-old girl, whose father said access to medical treatment was delayed because of Covid restrictions. As China’s harsh Covid rules extend deep into their third year, there are growing signs of discontent across the country. For China’s leader, Xi…

Outbreaks Test China’s Efforts to Limit the Cost of ‘Zero Covid’

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Barely a week after no longer requiring residents to show a negative Covid test to use mass transit, the authorities in the northern Chinese city of Shijiazhuang have locked down much of the city for five days as infections surge. In Shanghai, many neighborhoods have begun requiring frequent Covid tests again only days after telling residents that the tests were seldom needed. And across much of Beijing, officials have ordered schools and many businesses to close as daily cases rose over the past week to more than 1,400 and the…

What Videos Show About the Extremes of China’s ‘Zero Covid’ Policy

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It has been weeks since Gao Mingjun, a 24-year-old resident of the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou, saw her mother. As coronavirus cases began spreading in Zhengzhou last month, Ms. Gao’s mother, who works and lives at the city’s Foxconn industrial park — home to the world’s biggest iPhone assembly plant — told her daughter that she was barred from leaving the compound. Then, one night, Ms. Gao’s mother was ordered into a quarantine center about four miles away. She and dozens of other groggy workers were made to wait…

China’s Zero-Covid Approach Explained as Chengdu Lockdown Is Extended

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HONG KONG — The coronavirus has become widespread around much of the world, and many countries have settled on some combination of living with or ignoring its presence. But China, where it first appeared in late 2019, remains intent on eradicating the virus, carrying out extensive lockdowns and testing wherever new cases arise. The country’s “zero-Covid” policy, and the weight it has imposed on the economy, travel and everyday life, has spurred continuing debate on whether it remains the best course for managing the risks posed by the pandemic. But…

China’s Covid Lockdowns Strand Tourists

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A few days into a two-week tour through the island province of Hainan — known as the Hawaii of China — Nicole Chan received a message from local authorities that no traveler in the country wants to see in the pandemic. On Aug. 3, a day after officials reported 11 cases of Covid-19 in Sanya, a city of more than one million in Hainan, Ms. Chan was identified by the authorities as at risk because she had been in the area that day. She was told to quarantine right away…

The World Tries to Move Beyond Covid. China May Stand in the Way.

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As the rest of the world learns to live with Covid-19, China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, wants his country to keep striving to live without it — no matter the cost. China won a battle against its first outbreak in Wuhan, Mr. Xi said last week, and “we will certainly be able to win the battle to defend Shanghai,” he added, referring to the epicenter of the current outbreak in China. But pressure is mounting for a change to the zero-Covid strategy that has left Shanghai at a standstill since…

Hunting for the next virus

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Searching for the next virus The Covid-19 pandemic is not over yet, but some researchers are already worrying about mousepox. Colin Carlson, a biologist at Georgetown University, has spent the last few years training computers to predict which dangerous viruses could jump from animals to humans, following in the footsteps of the coronavirus (which came from bats), H.I.V. (chimpanzees) and hundreds of other pathogens. His team used machine learning to develop a short list of potentially dangerous viruses that could eventually make a leap. Mousepox — a virus that infects…

China Won’t Sell Olympics Tickets to Chinese Public

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China had already barred foreign spectators from attending the Winter Games that begin in Beijing in less than a month. On Monday, it announced that most Chinese people won’t be able to attend either. Citing the evolving threat from the coronavirus pandemic, the Beijing 2022 organizing committee announced that it was ending ticket sales to the events “to ensure the safety of all participants and spectators.” The decision came less than two days after health authorities reported Beijing’s first case of the Omicron variant and ordered an immediate lockdown and…