In Guiyang and elsewhere, COVID-19 vexes residents

After five days of fighting the latest COVID-19 outbreak, the prevention and control situation in Guiyang, Guizhou province, remains severe and complex, officials said on Monday.

"As of 10 am on Monday, testing had found 132 people positive for the coronavirus, including six confirmed cases and 40 asymptomatic carriers," Liu Lan, deputy mayor of Guiyang, said at a news conference on Monday. "The daily increase is still high."

Meanwhile, the number of close contacts and sub-close contacts is also increasing.

"A total of 1,760 close contacts were traced in the city, and 132,944 received yellow health codes," she said. "Starting on Monday, some urban areas in the city will be put under four-day static management, including the whole Guanshanhu district."

According to the analysis of positive tests and gene sequencing, the current outbreak is the Omicron subvariant BA.2.76, which is homologous to the cases detected in the Tibet autonomous region and Chengdu, Sichuan province.

However, the source of infection and transmission chain is not clear, and most of the infected people were linked to a logistics park in the city's Huaxi district.

"The logistics park has characteristics of complex personnel, high mobility and extensive social activity, which may result in cross-regional transmission," Liu said. "Static management can most effectively block the chain of virus transmission and win the victory of prevention and control as soon as possible."

The city's epidemic control and prevention headquarters published a letter to all residents early on Sunday.

For those residents with special needs, such as emergency medical treatment, necessary work tasks and some other urgent cases, they can present a valid work certificate and a negative nucleic acid test obtained within 24 hours. There will be staff members to help them, the letter said.

The headquarters also urged residents to take good personal protection measures when going out.

All kindergartens, primary schools, middle schools and vocational schools in the six urban districts of the city and Qingzhen city have been suspended and started providing courses online, the local education bureau said.

The Chinese mainland on Sunday had 303 locally transmitted confirmed COVID-19 cases and 1,249 asymptomatic carriers, the National Health Commission reported on Monday.

According to a report in Health Times, since Thursday the mainland has reported 6,696 local infections involving 26 provinces and regions. Of those, it said, epidemic development in Liaoning, Heilongjiang, Guangdong, Sichuan and Qinghai provinces and the Tibet autonomous region are still at a high level.

Meanwhile, 34 regions have been put under static management or partial static management, including seven capital cities — Chengdu, Sichuan; Lhasa, Tibet; Xining, Qinghai; Urumqi, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region; Shijiazhuang, Hebei province; Guiyang, Guizhou; and Harbin, Heilongjiang. One municipality, Tianjin, was also among them.

Some places, such as Dengzhou and Shangqiu in Henan and Daming county, Hebei, urged people to celebrate the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival locally to avoid the risk of spreading the virus because of the flow of tourists.

Quzhou county in Hebei and Jieyang, Guangdong province, also released statements that residents should avoid visiting crowded and confined venues and holding family gatherings with more than 10 people.