A Hong Kong lawmaker has sparked issues over the well being of Xi Jinping after testing optimistic for Covid-19 simply two days following his assembly with the Chinese president.
Steven Ho, a member of Hong Kong’s greatest pro-Beijing get together, returned a optimistic take a look at on Saturday. But Ho stated he was unfavourable when he was examined on Thursday earlier than he stood two rows behind Xi for a masked group {photograph} and meet-and-greet session.
The well being of Xi, China’s strongest chief in a era, is among the many most delicate points within the nation, which means there’s little probability of commentary on the incident by officers or media.
“I did not just say ‘Hello President’, I also said to Xi, ‘thank you for your hard work, president’,” Ho wrote on social media. “He nodded at me. He was very amiable.”
The occasion, which was attended by greater than 80 chosen folks, befell throughout Xi’s first journey exterior mainland China in additional than two years.
Xi made the two-day go to to Hong Kong to mark the twenty fifth anniversary of the territory’s handover from Britain to China and to swear in John Lee because the territory’s new chief government.
The president didn’t spend the night time in Hong Kong amid a resurgence of Covid circumstances within the territory, selecting as a substitute to journey again to Shenzhen and return the subsequent day. About 2,000 circumstances a day are being reported in Hong Kong.
Guests corresponding to Ho who had been scheduled to fulfill Xi had been required to bear each day coronavirus checks and resort quarantine earlier than the classes.
Ho added that he skipped Friday’s swearing-in ceremony after an “uncertain” Covid outcome got here again that day.
But one one that attended the identical session as Ho dismissed the well being dangers concerned. “Maybe the picture looked close, the spacing was actually quite far,” he stated. “You could not take the mask off.”
Macau, the playing hub neighbouring Hong Kong, can also be going through its worst coronavirus outbreak with greater than 850 circumstances reported previously two weeks. Its first two Covid deaths had been recorded on Sunday. Local authorities didn’t rule out locking down the town as a brand new spherical of mass testing started on Monday.
Casino operators within the former Portuguese colony are burning by means of their money reserves, with analysts anticipating “near-zero” revenues in the course of the interval. Although casinos have been allowed to stay open, buyer numbers have plummeted and employees have been instructed to remain house.
Separately, China reported 41 domestically transmitted Covid-19 circumstances on Monday and 339 native asymptomatic circumstances, which it classifies individually.
The whole variety of new circumstances greater than doubled over the weekend to nearly 400, from fewer than 200 a day earlier, and is up from about 50 in mid-June.
The overwhelming majority of the circumstances are centred round Anhui and Jiangsu, two provinces neighbouring Shanghai. Local authorities reimposed lockdowns in Lingbi, a county of greater than 1mn folks in Anhui’s north-east, and ordered a sixth spherical of obligatory testing for all residents of Si, one other close by county.
China’s eight-fold enhance in circumstances over the previous two weeks will take a look at makes an attempt by Xi’s administration to ease draconian curbs on journey and financial exercise beneath the president’s controversial zero-Covid coverage.
Last week, China halved its quarantine interval for worldwide travellers to 1 week, the primary vital nationwide leisure of restrictions since waves of the Omicron variant hit Shanghai and Beijing this 12 months.
Yet the problem of utterly eradicating coronavirus will solely enhance with the arrival of extra transmissible Covid sub-variants. Health researchers warned final week that circumstances of the BA.4 and BA.5 variants had been rising.
