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Millions of Chinese are being tested for coronavirus again after the infection was re-introduced at Nanjing Airport in July.
75 are newly infected in the last 24 hours, and the cases have spread to more than 20 cities. Hundreds of thousands of residents of Nanjing, a city of more than 9 million people, are under lockdown.
The contacts of 5,000 people who attended a festival in a tourist town in Hunan Province are being tracked, after positive tests of four.
For months, China has been fighting successfully, controlling the pandemic almost completely.
The ruling Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Commission for Discipline Inspection has publicly criticized the airport’s management, accusing it of unprofessional management and lack of oversight.
The delta strain found in Nanjing has spread to Anhui, Guangdong, Hunan and Sichuan, and authorities have nearly cut the city off from the rest of the world as cases continue to rise, residents told RFA.
“The current situation in Nanjing is a major blockage,” said Nanjing student Zhou Ning.
“Transport connections have been cut off to the whole city because there are many places here that are now medium and high risk areas,” said another city resident.
“All medium- and high-risk housing communities have been closed and people have been forced to stay at home,” he said.
Long-distance railway and bus stations, nightclubs and gyms are closed.
No one is allowed to leave the city without a health code, which essentially requires a recent negative PCR test.
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