Chinese district retracts and ‘deeply apologises’ for bungled Covid mass testing notice

Name: China says Covid outbreak has peaked as Lunar New Year travel rush returns in full swing
Uploaded: 2023-01-25T08:31:00.000Z
Duration: 2 min 18 s
Description: China says Covid outbreak has peaked as Lunar New Year travel rush returns in full swing

Officials in Jiangxi province district scramble to clarify public notice that sparked fears of renewed zero-Covid restrictions

‘We are all positive, so what is there to test?’, asked one incensed resident

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Officials in a Jiangxi province district scrambled to retract a public notice that sparked fears of renewed zero-Covid restrictions. Photo: AFP

William Zheng

Published: 4:31pm, 25 Jan 2023

A district in southeast China has made a dramatic retraction and issued an apology over a mass PCR testing announcement that sparked widespread alarm that the country would resume its strict zero-Covid policies.

On Tuesday morning, the district of Dongxiang in Jiangxi’s Fuzhou city issued an official notice ordering all the 450,000 residents in the district to undergo mass PCR testing over the following two days.

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China says Covid outbreak has peaked as Lunar New Year travel rush returns in full swing

It was the first time a local authority in China had announced mass testing since early December, when the country began dismantling its strict zero-Covid policy, which relied on mass testing and quarantines to contain the spread of Covid-19.

The official notice, issued on the district’s official WeChat account, immediately caught nationwide attention, igniting heated discussions as many worried that local authorities would return to imposing harsh zero-Covid policies.

Using a familiar “resolutely resist” tag in their messages, many internet users left comments ridiculing the move. “We are all positive, so what is there to test?”, asked one person.

The National Health Commission and several health experts have estimated that the vast majority of the population has been infected with coronavirus over the past two months. Some major population centres were estimated to have infection rates of more than 90 per cent.