Photo: CFP

Residents in Beijing are encouraged to stay in the city for the upcoming New Year and Spring Festival holidays, Cai Qi, secretary of the Communist Party of China's Beijing Municipal Committee, said on Friday, urging the city to have zero-case infection while ensuring the success of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games.

Cai made the remarks at a meeting on Friday afternoon. At present, the global pandemic of COVID-19 is rampant, and some places in China are suffering from outbreaks, so the epidemic prevention and control situation is grim and complex, according to the meeting. 

Beijing should unshakably adhere to the dynamic zero-case policy to ensure zero local infections, the success of the Winter Olympics and Paralympics, and provide the public happy and peaceful holidays, Cai said at the meeting.

According to the meeting, the mobility of people should be reduced and clustering should be minimized. Large-scale artistic performances, exhibition and sales promotions, sports events and other gathering activities should be strictly restricted, and online group activities are encouraged instead.

The meeting requires that officials remain on duty during the festivals, noting that the epidemic prevention and control command system should always be in a state of emergency response.

According to the meeting, the city will ensure holiday services for the public. For example, the city vows to ensure price stability and adequate supply of daily necessities, enrich the public cultural life during festivals including launching more Winter Olympic-related programs, and maintain vaccination service during the holidays.

The city will continue to conduct regular testing and screening for key groups, and improve its ability to conduct 24-hour nucleic acid testing.

The closed-loop management for people entering China and those at high-risk positions should be strictly implemented. People entering Beijing are requested to show negative nucleic acid test certificates taken within 48 hours and health codes. Those with travel history in areas where more than one local case were reported within 14 days and cities where land border ports are located are strictly restricted from entering the city, according to the meeting.

At another press conference held by the State Council for the national anti-epidemic work on Saturday, responding to some cities that encouraged residents to avoid unnecessary travel outside of the cities during Spring Festival, Liang Wannian, head of expert panel of COVID-19 response of China's National Health Commission, advised medium- and high-risk areas, ports and border cities, and cities that have major activities to take strict epidemic prevention and control measures. Other regions should launch flexible and effective policies based on local conditions rather than adopt a "one-size-fits-all" approach, he stressed.

As of Saturday, China has administered 2.66 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines, with more than 1.18 billion people completing their full-course inoculation, spokesperson of China's National Health Commission, Mi Feng, announced at the press conference.

Faced with the Omicron variant, many countries have realized that China's prevention method for the COVID-19 is right, Chinese top respiratory diseases expert Zhong Nanshan said at a seminar on Saturday.

Zhong noted that to fight the epidemic, China relies on two knacks - "early finding, early diagnosis, early isolation and timely treatment" and mass vaccination for prevention.

Global Times