BEIJING (Reuters) – Several Chinese cities have doubled down on COVID-19 testing, ordering residents to have their mouths swabbed more often, with some punishing people who skip tests, as authorities try to stop the virus from spreading while the case numbers are still small.
In June, several cities had relaxed testing requirements as the outbreaks suffered in spring began to subside, but an uptick in infections this month, fuelled by an Omicron subvariant, have forced a few areas to quickly tighten rules.
Mainland China has reported an average of over 300 local daily infections this month, higher than around 70 in June, but still tiny by global standards.
China’s strict “dynamic COVID-zero” policy, which relies heavily on quickly detecting infections through government-funded testing drives, helps keep clusters in check. However, concerns are growing about such tests’ financial costs and the disruption caused to people’s daily life.
Most of Shanghai was set to finish on Thursday a three-day mass testing campaign, which was imposed on top the existing requirement for residents to be tested every few days to be able to enter public venues.
Having endured a lockdown in April and May, authorities in Shanghai have rushed to prevent dozens of COVID cases from becoming a major outbreak, that could plunge China’s commercial hub back into another round of harsh restrictions.
The central city of Hebi in Henan province said from Thursday residents need to have proof of negative test result within 48 hours for access to public transports and various venues, weeks after it had relaxed the requirement in late June.
Hebi reported no local cases since May, while some nearby cities were fighting clusters.
After reporting a handful of infections, the eastern city of Hangzhou has reinstated a requirement from Wednesday for residents to be tested every three days, reversing a brief easing from three days to seven days last month.
Police in the northern municipality of Tianjin said earlier this month it warned scores of people for missing tests, and detained a handful.
Cities such as Haikou, Nanchang and Lanzhou, facing fresh clusters, have launched mass testing and required residents to be tested before they could leave, which has become standard practice wherever local community transmission is detected.
(Reporting by Roxanne Liu and Ryan Woo; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
