Streets were left almost empty in Beijing’s Chaoyang district on Wednesday as the government urged workers to work from home.
Footage shows empty streets, closed office buildings, empty bus stations, and empty metro entrances in the Central Business District (CBD) of Chaoyang, the capital’s worst-hit district in the fresh COVID wave after the government asked residents to work from home on Sunday.
China’s capital Beijing will require a negative PCR test result within 48 hours, instead of 72 hours, for people to enter public places such as government buildings, hotels and shopping malls from Thursday.
“Now if I want to stay in a hotel or even go to the restroom, I will need to scan the health code. So, I cannot go to the restroom because I have the pop-up notifications on the health kit,” said Zuo Jianmin, a resident who could not gain access to public spaces because of the faulty pop-up notifications of her health application.
She added “I hope the people who have the same situation as me can arise attention from related departments. I just hope to get a green code to go back home.”
Beijing applied new testing requirements for incoming travelers and residents. From Tuesday, people travelling to Beijing are required to take three nucleic acid tests over the first three days after arrival, one for each day. People will only be allowed to leave their homes or place of residence after the negative result of the test has been released.
913 new cases of infections in the city were reported on Wednesday from 0:00 to 15:00, according to the Beijing Local Health Commission. In the past seven days, there are more than 5,000 new cases of infections in total reported, showing a continuous increase.
