A coastal Chinese city has tightened lockdown restrictions by barring hundreds of thousands of residents from leaving and punishing those who do, amid a widening Delta variant outbreak.
The regime’s top health authorities required the city to step up efforts to monitor and control people’s movements, launch mass testing, and place more close contacts under quarantine, Sun Chunyang, the deputy director of the National Bureau of Disease Control and Prevention, said at a conference on Sept. 21.
Staff guarding at the entrance to the district stopped the two when they tried to walk out of the area for the first time on Sept. 22. Police arrested them later while they were crossing the fence to detour around checkpoints.
The leadership of Tong’an vowed to complete its fifth round of mass testing on Thursday. Yang Hua (pseudonym), a resident from Guanxun village in the district, told The Epoch Times that residents are afraid of receiving tests as the site is too crowded.
She started to queue for a nucleic acid test from 4 a.m. Sept. 20, but didn’t receive a test until 9 p.m., she said. Over 50,000 residents in the village had to receive the nucleic acid test at one site.
“You won’t know [the real situation] from the official report, ” she said.
Another resident from Panxu town in Tong’an said a couple of fights broke out in the queue as everyone hoped to be tested first.
The outbreak in Xiamen city has prompted other cities across the country to issue travel warnings ahead of tourist season beginning in late September.
A major national holiday starts from China’s Mid-autumn Autumn Festival. Generally, millions of people are expected to travel across the country.
