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Coronavirus pandemic
ChinaPeople & Culture

North China city of Harbin puts four districts on lockdown in bid to contain coronavirus

  • Capital of Heilongjiang province, which borders Russia and is close to North Korea, facing ‘peak of the epidemic’, local Communist Party official says
  • But residents of key commercial and trading hub say authorities have been too slow to react to the deadly outbreak

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Heilongjiang province has reported 479 coronavirus infections, of which 124 were in the four Harbin districts now under lockdown. Photo: Xinhua
Mandy Zuo
Authorities in one of China’s most northerly cities, which also serves as a major regional transport and trading hub, have placed four districts under total lockdown in a bid to contain the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus.
The municipal government in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang province, which borders Russia and is close to North Korea, said that all residents of Daoli, Daowai, Nangang and Xiangfang had been placed in temporary isolation and that all access points into and out of the districts – all of which are in downtown areas – had been closed.

With a population of more than 10 million people, Harbin is both the province’s largest economy and a major commercial centre for northern China. A base for grain production, it is also home to major players in the textile, pharmaceuticals, food, aircraft, car and metallurgy industries.

Since the start of the epidemic, the province has reported 479 infections – 124 of them in the Harbin districts now under lockdown – and 12 deaths. It is one of the worst affected outside Hubei province, where the virus was first detected in its capital, Wuhan, in December, and one of only a handful outside Hubei to have imposed such tight restrictions on its residents.
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The area under lockdown encompasses Taiping International Airport, which handled more than 20 million passengers in 2018, as well as several major train stations.

Two district leaders in Harbin have been sacked for negligence with regards to their efforts to deal with the epidemic. Photo: Shutterstock
Two district leaders in Harbin have been sacked for negligence with regards to their efforts to deal with the epidemic. Photo: Shutterstock
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“Harbin is now in the peak of the epidemic and the situation is very serious,” Wang Changsong, the head of the Communist Party’s disciplinary committee for Heilongjiang, said in an official statement on Wednesday.

“We should take more strict and detailed measures to prevent the disease spreading from downtown to suburban areas.”

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