BEIJING (AP) – Few people walked the sidewalks on Sunday in the historic Qianmen district of central Beijing, usually an area full of tourists on a national holiday and a sunny spring day.
Many Chinese have had a quiet May Day this year, as the government’s “zero COVID” approach restricts travel and imposes lockdowns in many cities. Millions remain confined to their buildings or complexes in Shanghai, China’s largest city, under a slightly relaxed lockdown.
According to an order announced the previous afternoon, all Beijing restaurants were closed to customers who would dine on Sunday and could only offer package and delivery until the end of the national holiday on Wednesday. Parks and tourist attractions in the Chinese capital are limited to half capacity. The Universal Studios theme park, which opened last year, said it was temporarily closed.
In Qianmen, the tourist neighborhood around the road leading to the imposing gates of the former imperial palace, some people bought food from stalls and ate on outdoor benches. Wang Liying said sales at its noodle and stir-fry restaurant had fallen 98% over the holidays compared to last year.
“The remaining 2% is too little for us,” he said. “There is not much we can do about the pandemic.”
The virus’s situation varies across the vast nation of 1.4 billion people, but the Department of Transportation said last week that it expected 100 million trips from Saturday to Wednesday, down 60% from last year. Many travelers stay in their countryside as local governments discourage or restrict cross-border travel to try to prevent new infections.
China adheres to a strict “zero COVID-19” policy, even as many other countries ease their restrictions and see if they can live with the virus. Much of Shanghai – a hub for financing, manufacturing and shipping – remains locked, disrupting people’s lives and dealing a blow to the economy.
The massive outbreak in Shanghai, where the death toll has exceeded 400, seems to be receding. The city recorded about 7,200 new locally transmitted cases on Saturday, from a ceiling of 27,605 on April 13. Outside of Shanghai, only 364 new cases were detected in the rest of mainland China.
Beijing, which has recorded 350 cases in the past nine days, is restricting activity to try to prevent a major outbreak and avoid a city-wide lockdown similar to Shanghai. Individual buildings and housing estates with coronavirus cases have been sealed. Gyms and theaters are closed for the holiday season. Visitors to many office buildings and tourist sites, such as the Great Wall, must test negative for COVID-19 within the past 48 hours.
Preventing and controlling the epidemic is at a critical juncture in Beijing, said Pang Xinghuo, deputy head of the city’s’s disease prevention center. While most of the new cases are among quarantined individuals, some have been found in the wider community, Peng said. Beijing is conducting repeated rounds of mass tests to find and isolate any infected individuals.
The online booking agency Ctrip said last week that people were booking trips to cities that were mostly virus-free, such as Chengdu in Sichuan Province and nearby Chongqing. Other popular destinations were Wuhan, where the world’s first major COVID-19 epidemic occurred in early 2020. About half of the orders on the Ctrip platform were for in-country travel.
Associated Press video producer Olivia Zhang contributed to this report.
