Tourists stuck in China resort city after Covid lockdown
Image credit: BBC
More than 2,000 tourists were left stranded in a coastal city in China after a rise in coronavirus cases.
While securing metropolitan areas, authorities in Beihai ordered the weekend mass testing of the city’s 1.9 million residents.
Concerns about the effects of China’s “zero-COVID” policy on the second-largest economy in the world are growing at the same time.
According to information made public last week, COVID-19 restrictions that had an impact on both enterprises and consumers caused the country’s GDP to decline in the second quarter of this year.
Infections were recorded in more than 450 popular summer resorts in southern Guangxi, China in the five days preceding July 16th.
Even though it might seem low by international standards, the number of cases is considerable by Chinese government standards for the epidemic.
Visitors who had not come into contact with anyone who had the virus or who had not visited a medium-risk or high-risk region would be allowed to leave as long as they received a negative COVID-19 test, according to a statement made by the local administration of Beihai on Sunday.
The remainder must be kept in the city and restrained, officials said at a news conference.
A vacationer from Beihai vented her annoyance in a comment that received more than 2,700 likes on the social media platform Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
The nation’s economy dropped dramatically in the second quarter of this year, according to government data released on Friday, as a result of widespread coronavirus lockdowns that had a huge negative impact on both businesses and consumers.
GDP fell by 2.6 percent in the three months ending in June compared to the previous quarter.
As the country maintained its zero-COVID policy at the time, Shanghai was one of the major Chinese cities that underwent full or partial lockdowns.
Gross domestic product, or GDP, is one of the most important indicators of an economy’s health.
It acts as a barometer for all commercial, governmental, and individual economic activity.