BEIJING – Southern Chinese cities closed schools and ordered testing for millions today in a race to curb a new Covid-19 outbreak that has sparked concerns about infections among unvaccinated schoolchildren.
Putian, a city of 3.2 million in coastal Fujian province, has ordered the testing of all residents after Delta-variant cases linked to a returnee from Singapore ballooned into a province-wide outbreak of more than 100 people.
China has been hit by multiple outbreaks involving the highly contagious Delta after initially vanquishing the first coronavirus wave last year.
The Fujian cluster is the biggest rebound in weeks and comes after the country declared the outbreak spurred by Delta under control, in a test of China’s “zero case” approach to the pandemic.
The country reported 59 new locally transmitted cases today, up from 22 the day before, all in Fujian.
Authorities said the cluster’s suspected patient zero is a man who recently returned from Singapore and developed symptoms after completing a 14-day quarantine and initially testing negative for the virus.
His 12-year-old son and a classmate were among the first patients detected in the cluster last week, shortly after the new school term began.
The variant then raced through classrooms, infecting more than 36 children including eight kindergarteners, said city authorities today, in the first major school-linked spread that the country has seen since the start of the pandemic.
China as of Sunday had administered more than two billion doses of its Covid-19 vaccines, according to the official Xinhua news agency, enough to fully vaccinate around 70% of its population.
But, most young children remain unvaccinated, sparking fear that the latest Fujian outbreak could hit the most vulnerable group in the country disproportionately.
The Putian government ordered schools to stop in-person classes yesterday, while the nearby port city of Xiamen followed suit today and shut down long-distance bus services while ordering all residents to be tested.
The Chinese embassy in Singapore yesterday warned its citizens to be “cautious” about travelling to the Southeast Asian country and “be psychologically and economically prepared” for difficulties re-entering China. – AFP, September 14, 2021
