Beijing shoppers empty store shelves as district begins mass testing

BEIJING, April 25 (Reuters) – Beijing residents shopped for food and other supplies as the city’s largest district began mass COVID-19 testing of all residents on Monday, raising fears of a lockdown. from Shanghai after dozens of cases in the capital in recent years. days.

Authorities in Chaoyang, home to 3.45 million people, ordered residents and those who work there to be tested three times this week on Sunday night, as Beijing warned that the virus had spread “stealthily” in China. the city for about a week before being detected.

“I’m preparing for the worst,” said a graduate student in nearby Haidian district surnamed Zhang, who ordered dozens of snacks and 10 pounds of apples online.

Shoppers in the city flocked to stores and online platforms to stock up on leafy greens, fresh meat, instant noodles and toilet paper rolls.

In Shanghai, where most of its 25 million people have been in lockdown for weeks, the main bottleneck in the food supply has been the lack of enough couriers to make deliveries to homes, fueling the anger of the residents. read more

In Beijing, supermarket chains including Carrefour (CARR.PA) and Wumart said they had more than doubled inventories, while grocery-focused e-commerce platform Meituan (3690.HK) increased stocks and quantity. of staff to sort and deliver, according to the state-backed Beijing Daily.

Since Friday, Beijing has reported 70 locally transmitted cases in eight of its 16 districts, with Chaoyang accounting for 46 of the total, a local health official said on Monday.

Even in districts like Haidian that have yet to report any cases in the current outbreak, there is a sense of growing concern about the food supply.

While the number of cases in the Chinese capital is small compared to those around the world and the hundreds of thousands in Shanghai, the Chaoyang district asked residents to reduce public activities, although most schools, shops and offices remained open.

Chinese stocks tumbled on Monday, with the blue chip CSI300 index (.CSI300) closing down 4.9% to a two-year low, weighed down by concerns that Beijing was about to join Shanghai in the closures. L2N2WN0GK read more

The Shanghai Composite Index (.SSEC) fell 5.1%.

Beijing’s Chaoyang District is home to many wealthy residents, most foreign embassies, as well as entertainment venues and corporate headquarters. It has little manufacturing.

“The current outbreak in Beijing is stealthily spreading from as yet unknown sources and developing rapidly,” a municipal official said on Sunday.

More than a dozen buildings in Chaoyang have been closed. For the rest of the district, people were to be tested on Monday and again on Wednesday and Friday.

On Monday morning, people lined up at makeshift testing sites manned by medical workers in protective suits. Under massive testing campaigns in China, multiple samples are tested together.

“I came as the notice suggested, at 6 am, for the test just to make sure I can get to work on time,” said a man in his 30s queuing for a test at his housing complex.

In the early afternoon, movement restrictions were tightened in a part of Chaoyang, with residents told not to leave the area at all and not to leave their local compounds for non-essential reasons, state television reported.

Reporting by Ryan Woo, Roxanne Liu, Muyu Xu, Zhang Min, and Albee Zhang; Edited by Tony Munroe, Himani Sarkar, Emelia Sithole-Matarise, and Alex Richardson

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