Europe 1 with AFP 10:54 am, October 30, 2021

China faces a Covid-19 epidemic rebound within 100 days of the Winter Olympics in Beijing.

To curb the contagion, all cinemas in Xicheng District, a district of the capital, will have to remain closed until November 14.

A million inhabitants live there.

The Chinese capital ordered the closure of some of its cinemas on Saturday, as the country faces a Covid-19 epidemic rebound within 100 days of the Beijing Winter Olympics. The imperial city, which organized the Summer Games in 2008, will become next February the first city in the world to also host events for the Winter Olympics. In this context, the authorities, who follow a zero tolerance policy against the slightest case of Covid-19, have taken great steps to eradicate an epidemic outbreak for the moment very limited, with less than 300 cases. But ten provinces are affected out of the thirty that the Asian giant has and the virus has already reached Beijing.

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To curb the contagion, all cinemas in Xicheng District will have to remain closed until November 14, the municipality said in a notice on Friday.

Xicheng District, which includes neighborhoods west of Tiananmen Square, has a population of over one million.

The move comes as China nationally reported 59 new locally-originated Covid-19 cases on Saturday, a record number since mid-September.

Among them, two cases in Beijing linked to a group of contaminated tourists in the north of the country.

If these figures may seem derisory compared to those recorded daily in other parts of the world, they are pushing the authorities to redouble their vigilance in the run-up to the Winter Olympics, which will begin on February 4.

Six million Chinese currently confined

The new epidemic focus is more than 650 km from Beijing, in the border town of Erenhot, on the edge of Mongolia.

As a precaution, some six million Chinese across the country are under lockdown in cities in which cases have been detected.

Entry to many regions is now conditional on showing a negative test, especially for travelers from cities where cases have recently been reported.

About half of the flights from the capital's two main airports were canceled on Friday.

And the authorities advise against leaving the city unless necessary.

They also asked Beijingers to postpone the weddings.