Beijing shoppers clear store shelves as district starts mass testing
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[April 25, 2022]
BEIJING (Reuters) -Beijing residents
snapped up food and other supplies as the city's biggest district began
mass COVID-19 testing of all residents on Monday, prompting fears of a
Shanghai-style lockdown after dozens of cases in the capital in recent
days.
Authorities in Chaoyang, home to 3.45 million people, late on Sunday
ordered residents and those who work there to be tested three times this
week as Beijing warned the virus had "stealthily" spread in the city for
about a week before being detected.
"I'm preparing for the worst," said a graduate student in the nearby
Haidian district surnamed Zhang, who placed online orders for dozens of
snacks and 10 pounds of apples.
Shoppers in the city crowded stores and online platforms to stock up on
leafy vegetables, fresh meat, instant noodles and rolls of toilet paper.
In Shanghai, where most of its 25 million residents have been locked
down for weeks, the main food supply bottleneck has been the lack of
enough couriers to make deliveries to homes, fuelling anger among
residents.
In Beijing, supermarket chains including Carrefour and Wumart said they
had more than doubled inventories, while Meituan's grocery-focused
e-commerce platform increased stocks and the number of staffers for
sorting and delivery, according to the state-backed Beijing Daily.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Apr/25/images/ads/current/LPL_small%201.gif)
Since Friday, Beijing has reported 70 locally transmitted cases in eight
of its 16 districts, with Chaoyang accounting for 46 of the total, said
a local health official on Monday.
Even in districts such as Haidian that have yet to report any cases in
the current outbreak, there is a sense of growing unease over food
supply.
AREAS UNDER LOCKDOWN
While the Chinese capital's caseload is small compared with those
globally and the hundreds of thousands in Shanghai, Chaoyang district
told residents to reduce public activities, although most schools,
stores and offices remained open.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Apr/25/images/ads/current/charrons_bch_2022.png)
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![](../images/042522pics/health1.jpg)
A man takes nucleic acid test at a mobile testing site following the
coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Beijing, China, April 25,
2022. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Apr/25/images/ads/current/graue_preowned_042322.png) Chinese shares tumbled on Monday,
with the blue-chip CSI300 index closing down 4.9% at a two-year low,
weighed by worries Beijing was on the verge of joining Shanghai in
lockdowns. [L2N2WN0GK]
The Shanghai Composite Index slumped 5.1%.
Beijing's Chaoyang district is home to many wealthy residents, most
foreign embassies as well as entertainment venues and corporate
headquarters. It has little manufacturing.
"The current outbreak in Beijing is spreading stealthily from
sources that remained unknown yet and is developing rapidly," a
municipality official said on Sunday.
More than a dozen buildings in Chaoyang have been put under
lockdown. For the rest of the district, people were to be tested on
Monday and again on Wednesday and Friday.
On Monday morning, people queued at makeshift testing sites manned
by medical workers in protective suits. Under mass testing campaigns
in China, multiple samples are tested together.
"I came as the notice suggested, at 6 a.m., for testing just to make
sure that I can get to work on time," said a man in his 30s queuing
for a test in his residential compound.
By the early afternoon, movement restrictions in one part of
Chaoyang were tightened, with residents told not to leave the area
at all and not to leave their local compounds for non-essential
reasons, state television reported.
(Reporting by Ryan Woo, Roxanne Liu, Muyu Xu, Zhang Min and Albee
Zhang; Editing by Tony Munroe, Himani Sarkar, Emelia
Sithole-Matarise and Alex Richardson)
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