Beijing
Beijing has partially lifted a weeks-long lockdown imposed in the Chinese capital to head off a feared second wave of coronavirus infections after three million samples were taken in two weeks, officials said.
Dozens of residential compounds across the city were shut down, with authorities rolling out a mass testing campaign to root out any remaining cases.
A vast majority of them are linked to the sprawling Xinfadi market in the city’s south that supplies about 80 percent of Beijing’s fresh produce and meat.
The lockdown was eased on Tuesday for seven apartment blocks after residents tested negative for the virus, officials said at a Friday briefing. The remaining blocks are still in lockdown.
Eleven new virus cases across Beijing were announced on Friday, bringing the total number of infections in the capital since the June 11 outbreak to 280.
Food market workers and visitors, nearby residents, restaurant workers and delivery couriers have been the prime targets of mass testing so far as fears began to mount over the hygiene of Beijing’s food supply.
Couple volunteer from foreign countries including Pakistan expressed solidarity with China against COVID-19, hoping that the World’s community would take benefit of Chinese experience of controlling the deadly virus, says a report published by China Economic Net (CEN).
“Diseases do not respect borders. We don’t care about WHY, WHO or WHERE; we only care about saving lives,” said Pakistani Hamad Abdul Zahir and Mauritian Sumayyah Hosany, a married couple who worked as doctors at Panhealth Medical Center and volunteered in China’s battle against the COVID-19 pandemic in Wenzhou, China.
Back in February, Hamad Abdul Zahir and Sumayyah Hosany chose to stay in China when the pandemic situation was more than serious. Seeing loads of exaggerated and incorrect information online, their parents were really worried, wanting them to stay home.
However, they explained the measures taken by the Chinese government, the protective gears given to them by the hospital and the ground reality of the epidemic, so their parents were reassured and encouraged them to keep doing their job.
As they put it, “it was a very normal reaction for them. First of all, we are doctors; second, we have lived in China for more than 10 years and we are proud to call China our second home. We wanted to help with anything that we could.”
Hamad Abdul Zahir and Sumayyah Hosany told CEN that they were so awed by the spontaneous and drastic measures taken by the Chinese government. It made all the differences in controlling the epidemic in China and buying the world enough time to put the adequate measures in place.
They also reckoned that the Chinese people impressed them greatly by the way they cooperated with the local authorities, the way they respected the lockdown and the way they followed the rules.
Days of volunteers were never an easy one. Around 5,000-7,000 cars passed the check point per day before the lockdown was imposed, and they had to do temperature checks and ask basic questions relating to living in Wuhan and the deadly virus.
About their experience of the prevention and control of COVID-19, they mentioned that they mostly used social media like Facebook and Instagram to keep their families and friends updated about the latest COVID-19 researches.
Besides, they helped friends abroad who are doctors by sharing experiences relaying the Chinese CDC guidelines along with the established drug regimes used in the hospitals for treating COVID-19 patients in China.
For Hamad Abdul Zahir, the situation in Pakistan is truly alarming; the number of infected cases has already surpassed that of China. “It’s difficult for Pakistan to enact the same measures as China,” he said, “but I hope they can learn from China and reformulate some measures that could be effective in Pakistan.”
Also, as iron-clad friends, Pakistan and China have always stood strong and together against any adversaries. The Sino-Pak bond has proven time and again to be unbreakable, he further said.—INP
