China Records First Covid-19 Deaths Since May as Cases Edge Toward Record High

The deaths and countrywide infections challenge recent moves by the top leadership to dial back some pandemic controls. The Chinese government ordered quarantine periods for inbound travelers to be shortened and lifted some mandatory quarantine requirements for close contacts of Covid patients.

At the same time, the central government has said it has no intention of abandoning its “zero-Covid” policy, only telling local officials to be more precise in its application to minimize damage to the country’s economy. Still, as cases surged, the mixed messaging has sown confusion as many cities order citizens to take frequent Covid tests and more residential buildings are put into sudden and frequent lockdowns.

China reported an average of almost 22,000 new daily cases over the past seven days, more than half of which were found in China’s southern economic hub of Guangdong province and the metropolis of Chongqing, government data showed.

Officials in major cities including Beijing and Guangzhou, the provincial capital of Guangdong, have imposed fresh lockdowns and told residents to stay home. Schools in some parts of the country’s capital returned to online classes this Monday, while ridership on subways in 19 major Chinese cities last week was about one-quarter below levels a year earlier, and about 90% lower in Chongqing, according to a Nov. 18 research note by Goldman Sachs.

Cities under full or partial lockdowns at the end of last week contributed more than half of China’s gross domestic product, the investment bank said. Beijing, Guangzhou and Chongqing alone account for almost 9% of GDP.

With cases edging closer to the record high recorded at the height of this year’s monthslong lockdown of Shanghai, investors are wary of a repeat of the disruption to manufacturing, global trade and domestic economic growth that caused. Restaurant, retailer and Macau-casino stocks listed in Hong Kong were among the top decliners on Monday, while liquor makers dragged on the Chinese onshore market. The Hang Seng Index fell 1.9%, while the Shanghai Composite Index declined 0.4%.

“Beijing is facing the most complicated and severe situation of containing Covid since the coronavirus first emerged,” Liu Xiaofeng, deputy director of the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said Monday afternoon. Beijing will require people arriving from other cities to test daily for three days on arrival, the Beijing government said.

Guangzhou said Monday it would lock down the district where China’s third-largest airport is located for five days. Over the weekend, authorities in the city of 19 million people closed all entertainment venues and halted dine-in services in restaurants in the central business district, after already imposing stringent restrictions in other areas of the city.

The chaotic and rapidly evolving situation presents economic uncertainty that seems likely to further damp consumption and property sales in the near term, research firm Gavekal Dragonomics said in a note to clients last week.

“You won’t know every day you wake up whether you are green-ed to go to work or not,” said Sean Zhu, a tech company employee in Beijing. His office building recently required daily negative Covid results and a green health code on a government monitoring app to enter. People who skip mandatory Covid tests could lose their green code.

Health authorities in the Chinese capital on Sunday reported two deaths of people with Covid-19, a 91-year-old woman with cerebral infarction and an 88-year-old man with respiratory disease and hypertension. On Saturday, an 87-year-old man with Covid and long-term hypertension died of sepsis triggered by a serious lung infection, the Beijing government said. The deaths bring the country’s official toll to 595 this year. That is less than Japan’s toll in the past seven days, according to World Health Organization data. Many international observers are skeptical of China’s figures, though public-health experts also acknowledge that its Covid policies have helped shield the population from the virus.

Elderly people have become more vulnerable during recent outbreaks, as the country struggles to convince more of them to get vaccinated. Among those 80 years and older, 66% have been fully vaccinated while only 40% have taken a booster as of earlier this month, according to government data.

The flare-ups have also prompted concerns among ordinary people about whether they would receive adequate treatment if infected. Local authorities in Guangzhou, which has reported around 80,000 cases this month, have told some people who tested positive but experienced no symptoms to remain calm and stay at home as local hospitals ran short of beds, some residents told The Wall Street Journal. Previously, people testing positive were sent to hospital or central quarantine facilities.

The threat to health posed by the coronavirus is decreasing as strains mutate within the Omicron variant, Zhang Wenhong, director of China’s National Infectious Disease Medical Center, said at a forum Friday.

“Vaccine boosters can provide very good protection for us to eventually exit the pandemic,” Dr. Zhang said.

Write to Raffaele Huang at [email protected]