SHANGHAI/BEJING (Portal) China worked to contain outbreaks of Covid19 in tourist hubs in Tibet and Hainan on Tuesday, as authorities launched further rounds of mass testing and shuttered sites to contain the highly transmissible Omicron variant.
Mainland China reported 828 new domestically transmitted cases in more than a dozen provinces and regions on Aug. 8, including more than half in Hainan, a hugely popular tourist destination, official data showed on Tuesday.
Tibet, which has reported only one symptomatic case since the pandemic began more than two years ago, has also reported cases.
Parts of Tibet conducted mass testing for Covid19 on Tuesday, including the two largest cities of Lhasa and Shigatse, where local authorities suspended major events, closed entertainment and religious facilities and cordoned off some tourist attractions including the Potala Palace.
Tibetan authorities reported 1 local patient with confirmed symptoms and 21 asymptomatic local infections on August 8. Although the number of cases is very small compared to other parts of China and the world, the rare infections have worried some residents.
“Although my life and work were not badly affected and Lhasa took action very quickly, I was still quite shocked since Tibet has been Covidfree for about 920 days,” said Yungchen, a 26yearold Lhasa resident who is from your employer was instructed to work from home.
“I was a little concerned because we don’t know when and where infected people contracted the virus,” she told Portal, preferring not to give her full name.
(Reporting by Roxanne Liu, Ryan Woo and Shanghai Newsroom)