China orders people to wear masks and gloves when opening mail after blaming Beijing’s first omicron case on a package from Canada
- China is urging people to wear masks and gloves when opening mail
- Authorities suspect a new case of Omicron in Beijing came from a package
- China asserts Covid can be transmitted via imports such as frozen meat and fish
- The country has employed brutally strict Covid restrictions in recent months
- Beijing has been put on high alert as it prepares to host the 2022 Winter Olympics next month
China is urging people to wear masks and gloves when opening mail, especially from abroad, after authorities declared the first case of Omicron found in Beijing could have arrived via a package from Canada.
Authorities vowed to step up disinfection of overseas mail and are insisting postal staff handling it are fully vaccinated.
The precautions come less than three weeks before the capital opens the Winter Olympic Games and as several cities work to stamp out new outbreaks of coronavirus infections.
China has employed brutally strict Covid restrictions in recent months to control any rise in cases prior to the games, plunging millions into snap lockdowns upon detection of a handful of cases.
‘Minimise purchases of overseas goods or receiving mail from abroad,’ state broadcaster CCTV said late on Monday in a social media post.
‘Be sure to protect yourself during face-to-face handovers and wear masks and gloves; try to open the package outdoors.’
A boy is swabbed by a health worker during a nucleic acid test for COVID-19 at a private testing site on January 17, 2022 in Beijing, China. While China has mostly contained the spread of COVID-19 during the pandemic, and even though cases remain relatively low, recent outbreaks of the virus including the emergence of the highly contagious Omicron variant have prompted the government to lockdown nearly 20 million people in various major cities and to reinforce stricter health measures
A medical worker wearing a full protective outfit sprays disinfectant while people line up for COVID-19 disease test in Shangdi sub-district in Haidian of Beijing, China, 16 January 2022
People walk past the logos of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympic Winter Games in Beijing on January 18, 2022. With three weeks to go until the games, China is taking no chances with its strict Covid restrictions
Health officials said the person found infected with the Omicron variant opened a package from Canada that had been routed through the United States and Hong Kong and transmission via the package ‘could not be ruled out’.
Beijing reported the new confirmed case of Covid on January 15, 2022, and that the case has not been to out of Beijing in the past 14 days or been in close contact with any confirmed cases, leading authorities to suspect potential transmission via the package.
The case highlighted the importance of ‘personal defence’, CCTV said.
Similar suggestions on how to handle parcels, not just those from overseas, were made by the National Health Commission on its official WeChat account and reposted by authorities in the cities of Shanghai and Nanjing.
China has been an outlier in asserting that Covid can be transmitted via cold-chain imports such as frozen meat and fish, even though the World Health Organization has played down the risk, and has been pushing a narrative via state media that the virus existed abroad before it was discovered in late 2019 in the central city of Wuhan.
In recent weeks, China has been battling a resurgence in cases in several cities, some of them of the highly transmissible Omicron variant. On Tuesday, it reported 127 new local cases with confirmed symptoms.
The State Post Bureau issued a notice on Monday stating that international mail must be disinfected after reaching China, and staffers who process and deliver international mail must have received Covid vaccinations and a booster.
China Post has also been reminding recipients of overseas mail to disinfect the contents ‘in a timely manner’ with stickers pasted on parcels.
People wearing face masks look at a display of the Winter Paralympic mascot Shuey Rhon Rhon, left, and Winter Olympic mascot Bing Dwen Dwen near the Olympic Green in Beijing, Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2022
A boy wearing a face mask poses for a photo in a bobsleigh next to a clock counting down the time until the opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, Saturday, Jan. 15, 2022
A man is swabbed by a health worker during a nucleic acid test for COVID-19 at a private testing site on January 17, 2022 in Beijing, China
While China has mostly contained the spread of Covid during the pandemic, and even though cases remain low, recent outbreaks of the virus including the emergence of the highly contagious Omicron variant have prompted the government to lockdown nearly 20 million people in various major cities and to reinforce stricter health measures.
Mask mandates, mass testing, immunisation boosters, quarantines, some travel restrictions and bans and lockdowns have become the norm as China continues to maintain its zero-Covid policy.
Beijing has been put on high alert as it prepares to host the 2022 Winter Olympics next month. Millions of people were locked down last week in the adjacent city of Tianjin, and almost all access to the city was suspended to prevent any cases from causing a major pre-Games outbreak in the capital.
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