Chinese authorities raced to carry out citywide Covid-19 tests across Beijing, betting their rapid action to crush a nascent outbreak in the nation’s capital will avoid a repeat of the chaos seen during Shanghai’s stringent lockdown, though raising the risk that China’s strict antivirus policies will further damage the faltering economy.
Residents had rushed to buy food and other essentials as fears of a Shanghai-style lockdown of the city grew. City officials late on Sunday ordered three rounds of tests beginning Monday for all residents of Chaoyang, Beijing’s most populous district and home to embassies and many foreign multinationals. Residents’ movements in several large city blocks covering roughly 2.5 square miles would be curtailed as tests are conducted, officials said.
By 8 p.m. Monday, almost 3.7 million tests had been carried out, with more than 520,000 results received. All of them were negative, officials told a late-night press conference.
Source: Wall Street Journal
