In a new twist in China’s strategy against COVID-19, thousands of diagnostic test booths have appeared on the sidewalks of Beijing and other cities.
Lines form every day, rain or shine, even when the infections are practically gone. Some people need the test to go to work. Others want to go shopping. In practice, all are required to take tests to show a negative result at the entrance of buildings, shopping malls and other public places.
Liu Lele, who works for a live video firm, has no problem getting tested often, but says opening hours don’t always fit with her schedule.
“I wish there were places that were open 24 hours or that didn’t close until 7 or 8 pm,” he said after taking a test near Beijing’s historic Bell and Drum towers.
The usual controls have become the new normal, while the Communist Party, which rules the country, clings to a “zero COVID” strategy that increasingly distances itself from the rest of the world.
Large cities have been ordered to set up testing centers within a 15-minute walk for all residents. Many are square booths where workers stick gloved hands through openings to take throat swabs from citizens.
The deployment follows an outbreak in Shanghai so big that authorities locked down the entire city for two months to curb it, a move that trapped millions of people and dealt a blow to the national economy.
For a year and a half, China largely kept the virus at bay by closing down individual buildings and neighborhoods and quarantining infected people. But the contagious omicron variant proved more difficult to stop. More than 580 people have died in Shanghai, a high number in a country that had only reported a handful of deaths following the initial deadly outbreak in Wuhan in early 2020.
Andy Chen, a senior analyst at consultancy Trivium China, said the proliferation of testing centers is a reaction to the inability of measures already in place to control omicron in Shanghai, although authorities did not say so explicitly.
“The regular testing requirements are intended to enhance the zero COVID strategy,” Chen said in an email response. “The goal is to keep the virus under control while avoiding another quarantine like in Shanghai.”
Many other countries, with populations tired of the restrictions of the pandemic and wanting to turn the page, have bet that rising vaccination rates and the development of treatments against COVID-19 make it possible to avoid quarantines and other drastic measures, and to live with the virus.
Most analysts expect China to maintain its zero-COVID policies at least until after a Communist Party congress next fall, at which Xi Jinping is expected to win a third five-year term as party leader. The government, which has defended its strategy as a success as the virus hit other countries, does not want a major outbreak before the meeting.
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AP Associated Press researcher Yu Bing, video producer Olivia Zhang in Beijing and researcher Si Chen in Shanghai contributed to this report.
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