China Locks Down Border City Of 3.6 Million As COVID Flares Amid Winter Games

As Beijing scrambles to wall off its 3,000-mile-long southern border with a new “Great Wall” of fencing, barbed wire and cameras/motion sensor tech – all iin the name of combating COVID – local authorities in one southern province have locked down a city situated along China’s border with Vietnam after discovering an outbreak there.

The latest lockdown in Baise, a city of nearly 4 million people, was ordered by authorities on Monday, Reuters reports. The decision comes as authorities have allowed COVID positive athletes to continue competing in the ongoing Winter Games (which have attracted abysmal viewership in the US).

Authorities in China’s southwestern city of Baise ordered residents to stay at home from Monday and avoid unnecessary travel as they enforced curbs that are among the toughest in the nation’s tool-box to fight rising local infections of COVID-19.

The outbreak in Baise, which has a population of about 3.6 million and borders Vietnam, is tiny by global standards, but the curbs, including a ban on non-essential trips in and out, follow a national guideline to quickly contain any flare-ups.

It’s worth noting that the size of the outbreak in Guangxi was surprisingly large, as typically authorities are only willing to admit to small numbers of locally spread cases. Authorities reported 99 domestically transmitted cases with confirmed symptoms between Saturday and noon on Monday, according to Pang Jun, deputy director of the regional health commission, who offered confirmation during a news briefing.

In that group of 99 cases, only 2 were said to be infected with omicron, according to the Chinese authorities.

Lockdown restrictions mirrored those of other earlier lockdowns: residents should stay indoors except for trips to buy essentials or test for COVID, and they should opt for delivery rather than in-store purchases whenever possible, state television said, citing a statement from the highest municipal authorities in Baise. Essential workers will be required to show special passes allowing them to travel between their homes and work.

The CCP authorities had locked down several Chinese cities – most notably Xi’an, the provincial capital of Shaanxi with a population of 13M – to try and prevent a potentially embarrassing outbreak ahead of the Winter Olympics.

While the total number of omicron cases reported in China isn’t clear, Reuters says cases of the variant have been confirmed in 10 of China’s provinces.

One local guide to tourists in Guangxi said he was worried that his income would suffer as authorities ordered him to cease taking new groups of travelers during the flare-up.

“My income is basically zero at this moment,” the guide, surnamed Luo, told Reuters, adding that he had already been affected in previous outbreaks in Guangxi and elsewhere.

In Baise, a hotel front desk agent who gave only his surname, Li, said, “Because of the outbreak, our hotel’s projected occupancy rate (this year) may not be as high as expected.”

The southern province of Guangdong and the municipalities of Beijing and Tianjin also reported small localized outbreaks on Sunday. In total, Chinese authorities reported 45 locally transmitted cases during the prior 24 hours, up from 13 cases reported during the prior day, according to data from China’s NHC.