China seals city as it battles worst coronavirus outbreak in months

In Wuhan, mass testing has shown some of its newly reported cases have a high degree of similarity to cases discovered

China’s worst coronavirus outbreak since the start of the pandemic a year and a half ago escalated on Wednesday with dozens more cases around the country, the sealing-off of one city and the punishment of its local leaders.

Since that initial outbreak was tamed last year, China’s people had lived virtually free of the virus, with extremely strict border controls and local distancing and quarantine measures stamping out scattered, small flareups when they occurred. Now, the country is on high alert as an outbreak of cases connected to the international airport in the eastern city of Nanjing touched at least 17 provinces. China reported 71 new cases of Covid-19 from local transmission Wednesday, more than half of them in coastal Jiangsu province, of which Nanjing is the capital.

In Wuhan, the central city where the first cases of Covid-19 were identified in late 2019, mass testing has shown some of its newly reported cases have a high degree of similarity to cases discovered in Jiangsu province. Those cases have been identified as being caused by the highly transmissible delta variant that first was identified in India.

Meanwhile, another hotspot was emerging in the city of Zhangjiajie, near a scenic area famous for sandstone cliffs, caves, forests and waterfalls that inspired the on-screen landscape in the “Avatar” films. The city ordered residential communities sealed on Sunday, preventing people from leaving their homes. In a subsequent order on Tuesday, officials said no one, whether tourist or resident, could leave the city. In addition to various lockdown measures, Nanjing and Yangzhou have since cancelled all domestic flights, while Beijing has suspended 13 rail lines and halted inbound long-distance ticket sales from 23 stations, according to the state-run news agency Xinhua.

The city government’s Communist Party disciplinary committee on Wednesday issued a list of local officials who “had a negative impact” on pandemic prevention and control work who would be punished. The city itself has only recorded 19 cases since last week, three of which were people with no symptoms, which are counted separately. However, individual cases linked to Zhangjiajie’s outbreak have spread to at least five provinces, according to the Shanghai government-owned newspaper the Paper. Far higher numbers were reported in Yangzhou, a city next to Nanjing, which has recorded 126 cases as of Tuesday.

As of Tuesday, China has given more than 1.71 billion vaccine doses to its population of 1.4 billion. Nomura Holdings lowered its projection for third-quarter growth to 5.1 per cent from 6.4 per cent previously and sees 4.4 per cent expansion in the final three months of the year, down from 5.3 per cent. For the full year, Nomura cut its GDP growth forecast to 8.2 per cent from 8.9 per cent. “The draconian measures taken by the government are resulting in potentially the most stringent travel bans and lockdowns in China since the spring of 2020,” said Lu Ting, Nomura’s chief economist for China. “Recent rainstorms and flooding 3 both worse than expected — also necessitate a downward adjustment to our GDP growth forecasts for the third quarter.”

Goldman Sachs Group said the potential impact on third-quarter growth could be 0.7 percentage points, although it didn’t lower its 6.2 per cent growth forecast for the quarter, saying there are uncertainties about the duration of the outbreak and likely stronger policy support. Bloomberg Economics and Natwest Group Plc. also see downside risks to their growth forecasts.