BEIJING/SHANGHAI: China set out urgent plans to protect rural communities from COVID-19 on Friday as millions of city-dwellers planned holidays for the first time in years after the government abandoned its stringent system of lockdowns and travel curbs.
China's move last week to start aligning with a world that has largely opened up to live with the virus, followed historic protests against President Xi Jinping's signature 'zero-COVID' policies designed to stamp out COVID-19.
But the excitement that met this dramatic u-turn has quickly given way to concerns that China is unprepared for the coming wave of infections, and the blow it could deliver to the world's second-largest economy.
China reported 2,157 new symptomatic COVID-19 infections for Dec. 15 compared with 2,000 a day.
The official figures, however, do not capture the whole picture as testing has dropped, and are at odds with signs of wider spread in cities where long queues outside fever clinics and empty pharmacy shelves have become a common sight.
There is particular concern about China's hinterland in the run up to local Lunar New Year holidays starting on Jan. 22.
Rural areas are likely to be inundated with travelers returning to their hometowns and villages, which have had little exposure to the virus during the three years since the pandemic erupted.
China's National Health Commission on Friday said it was ramping up vaccinations and building stocks of ventilators, essential drugs, and test kits in rural areas. It also advised travellers to reduce contact with elderly relatives.
Mainland China's international borders remain largely shut, but recent decisions to abandon testing prior to domestic travel and disable apps that tracked people's journey history have freed up people to move around the country.
One of China’s most populous provinces Henan cancelled all holidays for healthcare staff until the end of March to ensure “a smooth transition” as COVID-19 restrictions ease, state media reported late Thursday.
Multiple cities across the country of 1.4 billion people also opened new vaccination sites to encourage the public to take booster shots, the state-run Global Times newspaper reported.
“Go all out” was the message from China’s state asset regulator in a statement late Thursday that urged government-owned drug makers to ensure supplies of COVID-19 related medicines to meet “the rapid increase” in demand.
SF Express, one of China’s largest courier services, said on its official WeChat account that it sent in workers from across the country to keep deliveries going in Beijing amid staff shortages and soaring demand.
It also said it had started a “fast track” for emergency shipments such as medicines and daily necessities, with demand in the capital 300 percent above normal levels.
The COVID-19 scare in China also led people in Hong Kong, Macau and in some neighborhoods in Australia to go in search for fever medicines and test kits for family and friends on the mainland.
Thanks to the government’s previously uncompromising controls, China got off lightly compared with many other countries during the pandemic over the past three years, but now many Chinese are resigned to catching the virus at some point.
“Everyone will get it, I guess,” a 29-year-old Beijing resident who requested to be identified by her surname Du, said on the streets of Beijing.
Analysts fear China will pay a price for letting the virus rapidly rip through a population that lacks “herd immunity” and has low vaccination rates among the elderly.
That has dented prospects for near-term growth, even if the opening up should eventually revive China’s battered economy.
JPMorgan on Friday revised down its expectations for China’s 2022 growth to 2.8 percent, which is well below China’s official target of 5.5 percent and would mark one of its worst performances in almost half a century.
China is bracing for “a transitional pain period”, analysts at the bank said, adding they expected infections to spike after the Lunar New Year before the economy starts to recover in mid-2023.
The holidays will be a “big testing ground for how far these COVID-19 cases are going to rise,” said Rob Drijkoningen, co-head of emerging market debt at Neuberger Berman.
President Xi, his ruling Politburo and senior government officials are holding their annual Central Economic Work Conference this week, sources said.
China’s top state planning body, the National Development and Reform Commission, said “arduous efforts” are needed to sustain the recovery in growth due to an adverse external environment and the global economy’s loss of momentum.
Companies that are already suffering from China’s policy shift are the swathes of firms involved in its quarantining, COVID-19-tracking and movement-monitoring products and services, which had become big employers over the past three years.
China’s yuan firmed on Friday as traders remained optimistic that more measures to support the economy would emerge from the conference.
China braces for COVID-19 spread to countryside as holidays near
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China braces for COVID-19 spread to countryside as holidays near
- Millions set to travel across country for Lunar New Year
- National Health Commission ramping up vaccinations and building stocks of ventilators, and test kits in rural areas
Afghan prisoner in US custody freed in exchange for American citizens, Kabul says
An Afghan prisoner in American custody was freed in exchange for US citizens, Afghanistan’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday.
“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan considers this exchange a good example of resolving issues through dialogue and extends special gratitude to the brotherly nation of Qatar for its effective role in this process,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Malaysia seeks gag order on talk of jailed ex-PM’s bid to reveal royal document
- Najib Razak claims that a document exists allowing him to serve his remaining prison sentence under house arrest
- Former PM was found guilty in 2020 of criminal breach of trust and abuse of power for illegally receiving funds
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s attorney-general’s chambers has sought a gag order to ban public discussion of former Prime Minister Najib Razak’s judicial review claim that a document exists allowing him to serve his remaining prison sentence under house arrest, according to state news agency Bernama.
Najib, jailed for his role in the multi-billion dollar 1MDB scandal, is pursuing a legal bid to compel authorities to confirm the existence of and execute an “addendum order” that he said was issued last year as part of a pardon by then-King Al-Sultan Abdullah Ahmad Shah, entitling him to serve the remainder of his sentence at home.
The issue has caused a huge stir in Malaysia, with disgraced political heavyweight Najib insisting the former king’s addendum order was ignored by authorities when they announced the halving of his sentence last year.
The former king’s palace has issued a letter saying the document does exist, but Malaysia’s law ministry said it has no record of it, its home minister has denied knowledge and Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has said “we did not hide anything.”
Bernama on Monday quoted Shamsul Bolhassan, deputy chief of the chambers’ civil division, as saying the gag order request had been filed to a court.
The official had previously said the case touched on sensitive issues, according to Bernama.
Najib was found guilty in 2020 of criminal breach of trust and abuse of power for illegally receiving funds misappropriated from a unit of state investor 1Malaysia Development Berhad.
He is on trial for corruption in several other 1MDB-linked cases and denies wrongdoing. Najib this month hailed as “one step forward” the Court of Appeal’s decision to overturn the dismissal of his attempt to access the document. The case will go back to court to be heard by another judge.
Strong earthquake in Taiwan injures 27 and causes scattered damage
- The quake hit at 12:17 a.m. and was centered 38 kilometers southeast of Chiayi County Hall
- Taiwan lies along the Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’, where most of the world’s earthquakes occur
TAIPEI: A 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck southern Taiwan early Tuesday, leaving 27 people with minor injuries and some reported damage.
The quake hit at 12:17 a.m. and was centered 38 kilometers (24 miles) southeast of Chiayi County Hall at a depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles), Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration said. The US Geological Survey measured the earthquake at a less powerful magnitude 6.
There were scattered reports of minor to moderate damage around the cities of Chiayi and Tainan.
Taiwan’s fire department said 27 people were sent to hospitals for minor injuries. Among them were six people, including a 1-month-old baby, who were rescued from a collapsed house in the Nanxi district of Tainan. The Zhuwei bridge on a provincial highway was reported to be damaged.
No deaths have been reported, though rescuers were still assessing damage.
Two people in Tainan and one person in Chiayi city were rescued without injuries after being trapped in elevators.
The quake caused a fire at a printing factory in Chiayi, but it was extinguished, and there were no reports of injuries.
Last April, a magnitude 7.4 quake hit the island’s mountainous eastern coast of Hualien, killing at least 13 people and injuring more than 1,000 others. The strongest earthquake in 25 years was followed by hundreds of aftershocks.
Taiwan lies along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” the line of seismic faults encircling the Pacific Ocean where most of the world’s earthquakes occur.
Trump to pull nearly 1,660 Afghan refugees from flights, say US official, advocate
- Group includes unaccompanied minors awaiting reunification with their families in the US as well as Afghans at risk of Taliban retribution
- Nearly 200,000 Afghans brought to US by former President Joe Biden’s administration since the chaotic US troop withdrawal from Kabul
WASHINGTON: Nearly 1,660 Afghans cleared by the US government to resettle in the US, including family members of active-duty US military personnel, are having their flights canceled under President Donald Trump’s order suspending US refugee programs, a US official and a leading refugee resettlement advocate said on Monday.
The group includes unaccompanied minors awaiting reunification with their families in the US as well as Afghans at risk of Taliban retribution because they fought for the former US-backed Afghan government, said Shawn VanDiver, head of the #AfghanEvac coalition of US veterans and advocacy groups and the US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The US decision also leaves in limbo thousands of other Afghans who have been approved for resettlement as refugees in the US but have not yet been assigned flights from Afghanistan or from neighboring Pakistan, they said.
Trump made an immigration crackdown a major promise of his victorious 2024 election campaign, leaving the fate of US refugee programs up in the air.
The White House and the State Department, which oversees US refugee programs, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“Afghans and advocates are panicking,” said VanDiver. “I’ve had to recharge my phone four times already today because so many are calling me.
“We warned them that this was going to happen, but they did it anyway. We hope they will reconsider,” he said of contacts with Trump’s transition team.
VanDiver’s organization is the main coalition that has been working with the US government to evacuate and resettle Afghans in the US since the Taliban seized Kabul as the last US forces left Afghanistan in August 2021 after two decades of war.
Nearly 200,000 Afghans have been brought to the US by former President Joe Biden’s administration since the chaotic US troop withdrawal from Kabul.
One of the dozens of executive orders Trump is expected to sign after being sworn in for a second term on Monday suspended US refugee programs for at least four months.
The new White House website said that Trump “is suspending refugee resettlement, after communities were forced to house large and unsustainable populations of migrants, straining community safety and resources.”
“We know this means that unaccompanied children, (Afghan) partner forces who trained, fought and died or were injured alongside our troops, and families of active-duty US service members are going to be stuck,” said VanDiver.
VanDiver and the US official said that the Afghans approved to resettle as refugees in the US were being removed from the manifests of flights they were due to take from Kabul between now and April.
Minority Democrats on the House Foreign Relations Committee blasted the move, saying in a post on X that “this is what abandonment looks like. Leaving vetted, verified Afghan Allies at the mercy of the Taliban is shameful.”
They include nearly 200 family members of Afghan-American active-duty US service personnel born in the US or of Afghans who came to the US, joined the military and became naturalized citizens, they said.
Those being removed from flights also include an unknown number of Afghans who fought for the former US-backed Kabul government and some 200 unaccompanied children of Afghan refugees or Afghan parents whose children were brought alone to the United States during the US withdrawal, said VanDiver and the US official.
An unknown number of Afghans who qualified for refugee status because they worked for US contractors or US-affiliated organizations also are in the group, they said.
Trump signs executive order withdrawing from the World Health Organization
- He said the WHO had failed to act independently from the ‘inappropriate political influence of WHO member states’
NEW YORK: The United States will exit the World Health Organization, President Donald Trump said on Monday, saying the global health agency had mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic and other international health crises.
Trump said the WHO had failed to act independently from the “inappropriate political influence of WHO member states” and required “unfairly onerous payments” from the US that are disproportionate to the sums provided by other, larger countries, such as China.
“World Health ripped us off, everybody rips off the United States. It’s not going to happen anymore,” Trump said at the signing.
The move means the US will leave the United Nations health agency in 12 months’ time and stop all financial contributions to its work. The United States is by far the WHO’s biggest financial backer, contributing around 18 percent of its overall funding. WHO’s most recent two-year budget, for 2024-2025, was $6.8 billion.
Trump’s withdrawal from the WHO is not unexpected. He took steps to quit the body in 2020, during his first term as president, accusing the WHO of aiding China’s efforts to “mislead the world” about the origins of COVID.
WHO vigorously denies the allegation and says it continues to press Beijing to share data to determine whether COVID emerged from human contact with infected animals or due to research into similar viruses in a domestic laboratory.
