They are not Covid-19 alarm numbers (on the contrary, a surprising zero even yesterday) but data on tourist flows that arrive from China. Columns of people on Great Wall, all narrow along the paths in the woods with autumn colors in the Liaoning province, crowded on the Bund of Shanghai to admire the skyscrapers of Pudong. Are these the images that have been running on Beijing news for seven days,while in Europe there are restrictive measures to try to extinguish the second wave of coronavirus. China was on vacation until yesterday, from October 1st, the feast of the founding of the People’s Republic. They call her Hungjin Zhou, the Golden Week that every year makes hundreds of millions of Chinese move. This time it was the first major restart test for the tourism sector after the outbreak of the coronavirus in Wuhan, which in January coincided with the Lunar New Year exodus.
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The Chinese people were able to enjoy a long-awaited leisure break and in the eight 637 million trips were recorded between 1 October and yesterday, says the Beijing Ministry of Tourism, noting that the flow represents 79% compared to the same period of 2019. People still loyal to the advice to wear the mask, but in these conditions the social distancing is wavering.
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This mass movement was encouraged to revive consumption. This was a calculated risk, because din about a month, China reports zero internal infections. The only reported cases of coronavirus positivity lately are imported ones: Chinese citizens returning from abroad or foreign travelers. The health control procedures for those arriving in China (only for work reasons) are rigorous: you have to swab before embarking and send it to the Chinese diplomatic offices in the countries of departure; upon disembarkation, new tampon and even if negative, it is mandatory to spend 14 days in hotels designated by the authorities, under medical observation; at the end third buffer and compulsory registration on an app. With this system, the National Health Commission has identified 2,951 infected people arriving at the airports, since the authorities began to reopen the borders last spring. In total, in China, the declared cases of Covid-19 patients as of January are 85,500, with 4,634 deaths, mostly in Wuhan and Hubei.
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After the first wave runs out in the spring, with Wuhan released from lockdown on April 8, the government implemented a prudent strategy: controls continued in large cities, each outbreak being addressed with targeted and immediate closures, such as those around the Beijing food market in mid-June.
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The Party-State claims to have brought the situation under control, the numbers communicated by his metropolises at the moment give him reason, even if it is not certain that the same care in identifying infections is possible in rural areas. It is to be hoped that the Golden Week has not put the coronavirus back into circulation. We will know in two weeks whether to move hundreds of millions of tourists was a gamble.
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8 October 2020 (change October 8, 2020 | 23:31)
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