Beijing shut parks, shopping malls and museums on Tuesday as Covid cases continue to rise in the country. Mass testing has also resumed in several cities, raising fresh concerns over the economy.

Several other popular venues, such as the Happy Valley amusement park and the city's vast Chaoyang Park, a popular spot with runners and picnickers, are also talking of shutting down due to the outbreak. Beijing reported 1,438 new local cases, up from 962 on Sunday.

China reported 28,127 new local cases nationally for Monday, nearing its daily peak from April. Guangzhou and the southwestern municipality of Chongqing reported for about half of them.

Two more deaths have also been reported following the three fatalities over the weekend, China's first since May.&nbsp;

The spike in cases has dampened expectations of the country's economy reopening and things getting back to normal. China has recently made adjustments to its strict zero-Covid policy under which authorities have been asked to be more targeted in their clampdown measures and steer away from the widespread lockdowns and testing.

However, despite these changes, China is still following strict rules like no other country. Its borders are literally still closed to outsiders and domestic curbs are tighter than anywhere else in the world.

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City-wide testing was ordered in the municipality of Tianjin, near Beijing, on Tuesday, after a similar announcement on Sunday by Shijiazhuang.&nbsp;

Beijing is facing its most severe crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic amid tightened rules for entering the city. Arrivals from elsewhere in China also need to undergo three days of COVID-19 testing before they are permitted to leave their accommodation. Numerous buildings are also often locked down in Beijing, although those restrictions often last just a few days.

(With inputs from agencies)

&nbsp;

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Beijing shut parks, shopping malls and museums on Tuesday as Covid cases continue to rise in the country. Mass testing has also resumed in several cities, raising fresh concerns over the economy.

Beijing shut parks, shopping malls and museums on Tuesday as Covid cases continue to rise in the country. Mass testing has also resumed in several cities, raising fresh concerns over the economy. Several other popular venues, such as the Happy Valley amusement park and the city's vast Chaoyang Park, a popular spot with runners and picnickers, are also talking of shutting down due to the outbreak. Beijing reported 1,438 new local cases, up from 962 on Sunday. China reported 28,127 new local cases nationally for Monday, nearing its daily peak from April. Guangzhou and the southwestern municipality of Chongqing reported for about half of them. Two more deaths have also been reported following the three fatalities over the weekend, China's first since May. The spike in cases has dampened expectations of the country's economy reopening and things getting back to normal. China has recently made adjustments to its strict zero-Covid policy under which authorities have been asked to be more targeted in their clampdown measures and steer away from the widespread lockdowns and testing. However, despite these changes, China is still following strict rules like no other country. Its borders are literally still closed to outsiders and domestic curbs are tighter than anywhere else in the world. × City-wide testing was ordered in the municipality of Tianjin, near Beijing, on Tuesday, after a similar announcement on Sunday by Shijiazhuang. Beijing is facing its most severe crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic amid tightened rules for entering the city. Arrivals from elsewhere in China also need to undergo three days of COVID-19 testing before they are permitted to leave their accommodation. Numerous buildings are also often locked down in Beijing, although those restrictions often last just a few days. (With inputs from agencies)

Beijing shuts malls, museums and parks amid rising COVID-19 cases

The COVID-19 situation is easing around the world but not in China. Chaoyang, the largest district of China’s capital Beijing, urged people to stay home for the weekend and restricted intra-city travel as Covid-19 cases continue to rise in the city. Watch the full video to know more

China's COVID cases rise, Beijing under semi-lockdown

COVID-19 infections are on a rise in China as the country's top health officials begin easing some pandemic measures in a bit to provide some economic relief to the people

Chinese cities record new surge in COVID-19 cases

Guangzhou is now becoming China's latest COVID-19&nbsp;epicentre and a Shanghai-style lockdown might just be coming next for it as well. Official data released Tuesday showed that the cases are surging not just in the global manufacturing hub, but also other Chinese cities. &nbsp;

China's health authority reported a jump in locally transmitted infections, climbing to 7,475 on November 7 from 5,496 the day before and the highest since May 1. Guangzhou accounted for nearly a third of the new infections. Guangzhou alone reported 2,377 new local cases, up from 1,971 the previous day.

Also Read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/covid-curbs-in-china-will-likely-hit-iphone-14-shipments-wait-time-to-increase-apple-says-531730">Covid curbs in China will likely hit iPhone 14 shipments, wait time to increase, Apple says</a>

Beijing and other economically vital cities are demanding more PCR tests for residents and for locking down neighbourhoods and even districts in some cases. China has reinforced its commitment to continue with the zero-Covid approach to fight the rise in infections. The yuan weakened against the dollar and Chinese stocks slipped on Tuesday as it does not seem likely that China will reopen its borders soon.&nbsp;

The northern Inner Mongolia city of Hohhot was earlier the Covid epicentre of the country and had witnessed its most serious outbreak ever. Varying levels of curbs and lockdowns have been imposed in Guangzhou. However, it has till now managed to avert a a blanket lockdown like the one in Shanghai earlier this year.

The Covid caseload in Shanghai is slowly easing after it went into a lockdown in April and May following reports of thousands of new infections daily in the last week of March.

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People gave been mostly working from home with "only a few compounds locked up so far", a resident told Reuters. Public transit services, courier services and food delivery services have been hit. People also have to undergo RT-PCR tests every day.&nbsp;

In Beijing, 64 new local infections were detected and sparked a new burst of PCR tests for many of its residents and a lockdown of more buildings and neighbourhoods. Zhengzhou, which is a major production base for Apple supplier Foxconn, reported 733 new local cases, a rise of more than double the cases.

(With inputs from agencies)

&nbsp;

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Guangzhou is now becoming China's latest COVID-19 epicentre and a Shanghai-style lockdown might just be coming next for it as well. Official data released Tuesday showed that the cases are surging not just in the global manufacturing hub, but also other Chinese cities.

Guangzhou is now becoming China's latest COVID-19 epicentre and a Shanghai-style lockdown might just be coming next for it as well. Official data released Tuesday showed that the cases are surging not just in the global manufacturing hub, but also other Chinese cities. China's health authority reported a jump in locally transmitted infections, climbing to 7,475 on November 7 from 5,496 the day before and the highest since May 1. Guangzhou accounted for nearly a third of the new infections. Guangzhou alone reported 2,377 new local cases, up from 1,971 the previous day. Also Read | Covid curbs in China will likely hit iPhone 14 shipments, wait time to increase, Apple says Beijing and other economically vital cities are demanding more PCR tests for residents and for locking down neighbourhoods and even districts in some cases. China has reinforced its commitment to continue with the zero-Covid approach to fight the rise in infections. The yuan weakened against the dollar and Chinese stocks slipped on Tuesday as it does not seem likely that China will reopen its borders soon. The northern Inner Mongolia city of Hohhot was earlier the Covid epicentre of the country and had witnessed its most serious outbreak ever. Varying levels of curbs and lockdowns have been imposed in Guangzhou. However, it has till now managed to avert a a blanket lockdown like the one in Shanghai earlier this year. The Covid caseload in Shanghai is slowly easing after it went into a lockdown in April and May following reports of thousands of new infections daily in the last week of March. × People gave been mostly working from home with "only a few compounds locked up so far", a resident told Reuters. Public transit services, courier services and food delivery services have been hit. People also have to undergo RT-PCR tests every day. In Beijing, 64 new local infections were detected and sparked a new burst of PCR tests for many of its residents and a lockdown of more buildings and neighbourhoods. Zhengzhou, which is a major production base for Apple supplier Foxconn, reported 733 new local cases, a rise of more than double the cases. (With inputs from agencies)

With over 7,000 fresh cases, Guangzhou now becoming the Covid epicentre of China

China's health authority reported a jump in COVID-19 infections, climbing to 7,475 on November 7 from 5,496 the day before and the highest since May 1.

New COVID-19 cases climb to 7,000 in China

Neighbourhoods under strict lockdown. Thousands quarantined. Millions tested in mere days. Overseas arrivals locked up for weeks and sometimes months.

China has followed variations of that formula for dealing with the coronavirus for more than a year, and a new outbreak suggests that they could be part of Chinese life for some time to come.

Also Read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/china-reports-30-new-coronavirus-cases-on-june-5-up-from-previous-day-389684">China reports 30 new coronavirus cases on June 5, up from previous day</a>

China appeared to get the <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/coronavirus">coronavirus</a> under control nearly a year ago. But hundreds of millions of Chinese people remain unvaccinated. New variants of the coronavirus have appeared, and questions remain about whether China’s self-made <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/coronavirus-vaccine">vaccines</a> can stop them.

The latest cases have been found in Guangzhou, capital of the southern province of Guangdong. Authorities have blamed the delta variant, which has caused widespread loss of life in India.

The city tested practically its entire population of 18.7 million between Sunday and Tuesday, some of them for the second time. It has also put neighborhoods with a total of more than 180,000 residents into total lockdown, with practically no one allowed out except to go to medical testing.

The early infections appear to have jumped from person to person at a cluster of eateries. Each infected person has infected more other people than in any previous outbreak that China has confronted, Zhang Zhoubin, deputy director of the Guangzhou Center for Disease Control, said at a news conference.

“The epidemic faced by Guangzhou this time is an unprecedented opponent, and it requires more resolute and decisive measures to deal with it,” he said.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/china-reports-15-new-locally-transmitted-covid-cases-389134">China reports 15 new locally transmitted Covid cases</a>

Test facilities in Guangzhou have been operating around the clock. Lines are long. Residents wake early to try to beat the rush but still find delays.

China’s approach has evolved since the coronavirus first emerged, when Beijing initially put harsh restrictions on hundreds of millions of people. Today its lockdowns are focused on neighborhoods rather than cities or provinces. China has made vaccination the centerpiece of its strategy.

Still, many of the core tenets remain for a huge and densely populated country: vast testing, strict limits on movement and intense scrutiny of arrivals from other countries.

Foreign businesses have worried that those limits on international travelers could snarl their plans. A European Union Chamber of Commerce survey released this week found that three-quarters of member companies said they had been adversely affected by travel restrictions, usually by hindering them from bringing in key engineers or executives.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/fresh-covid-19-outbreak-rattles-china-cluster-grows-in-guangzhou-388878">Fresh COVID-19 outbreak rattles China, cluster grows in Guangzhou</a>

Beijing has demanded that travelers from dozens of countries spend two weeks in employer-supervised quarantine even before flying to China. Once there, travelers must spend at least two weeks and sometimes three or longer in government-supervised quarantine, even if they are fully vaccinated. Rounds of tests can turn up a possibly false positive, leading to more tests and additional days or weeks in isolation.

Many foreigners in China face a choice: If they leave to visit spouses, children and other family members elsewhere, they may be unable to reenter the country later because of the pandemic restrictions.

“There is absolutely a growing fatigue for a lot of the foreigners who are here,” said Jacob Gunter, senior policy and communications manager at the EU Chamber of Commerce in China.

At home, China’s leaders are pushing its people to get vaccinated. It has administered about 800 million doses by the government’s count, compared with 300 million administered in the United States. Yin Weidong, chair and CEO of Sinovac Biotech, one of China’s main vaccine manufacturers, told state television Friday that Chinese regulators had approved the emergency use of vaccines in children as young as 3.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/china-set-to-vaccinate-3-year-old-kids-report-390174">China set to vaccinate 3-year-old kids: Report</a>

Still, administering 800 million doses, almost all of the vaccines require two shots, means most of China’s 1.4 billion people have not been fully vaccinated. Some people remain hesitant to get the shots, and Chinese media outlets have used the Guangzhou outbreak to encourage skeptics to get inoculated.

The spread of the virus has raised fresh questions about the effectiveness of China’s vaccines, particularly against variants. The Seychelles last month and now Mongolia in the past three weeks have both had large numbers of infections despite high vaccination rates. Both have used the Sinopharm vaccine from China, although the Seychelles also relied partly on AstraZeneca vaccines.

The delta variant now circulating in Guangzhou has also shown the ability in other countries to infect some people who had already been vaccinated, a phenomenon known as vaccine escape. Research elsewhere has found that to be a particular problem for people who have received only a first injection of a two-jab vaccine and are then exposed to the delta variant.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/as-chinese-couples-get-approval-for-3-kids-uighur-women-still-subjected-to-birth-control-horrors-388898">As Chinese couples get approval for 3 kids, Uighur women still subjected to birth control horrors</a>

Researchers in Britain have found that receiving only the first of two shots of the Oxford-AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines may be only 30&nbsp;per cent effective in preventing infection with the delta variant, said Raina MacIntyre, who heads the biosecurity program at the Kirby Institute of the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

After two doses, effectiveness appears to rise to 60 per cent with the AstraZeneca vaccine and 88&nbsp;per cent with Pfizer-BioNTech.

“With the degree of vaccine escape there is with the delta variant, you really do need people to be fully vaccinated,” she said.

Yin told China’s state-run television network Saturday that a third shot of his company’s vaccine produces a tenfold increase in antibodies within a week. But Chinese vaccine manufacturers are not yet recommending a third dose.

“As far as China is concerned, in fact, completing the two-shot immunization is the most important task for all the public,” he said.

In the meantime, Guangzhou has tried to turn its virus setback into a showcase for local technologies. Officials there said they had used 31 driverless shuttle vans and trucks to send food and other critical supplies into locked-down neighborhoods to avoid exposing delivery personnel.

By Tuesday, Guangdong province had 157 people in the hospital with the virus and was announcing about 10 new cases per day. The province and also Guangzhou itself have banned anyone since last weekend from leaving unless they have a valid reason and a negative nucleic acid test for the virus within the preceding 48 hours.

Unlike many places around the world, Guangzhou at least does not have to worry about running out of pandemic supplies: It is coincidentally a hub for manufacturing and exporting them. Chen Jianhua, chief economist of the Guangzhou Bureau of Industry and Information Technology, said at a news conference Wednesday that the city’s daily production capacity was 91 million masks and 7 million sets of coronavirus detection chemicals.

Neighbourhoods under strict lockdown. Thousands quarantined. Millions tested in mere days. Overseas arrivals locked up for weeks and sometimes months. China has followed variations of that formula for dealing with the coronavirus for more than a year, and a new outbreak suggests that they could be part of Chinese life for some time to come.

Neighbourhoods under strict lockdown. Thousands quarantined. Millions tested in mere days. Overseas arrivals locked up for weeks and sometimes months. China has followed variations of that formula for dealing with the coronavirus for more than a year, and a new outbreak suggests that they could be part of Chinese life for some time to come. Also Read | China reports 30 new coronavirus cases on June 5, up from previous day China appeared to get the coronavirus under control nearly a year ago. But hundreds of millions of Chinese people remain unvaccinated. New variants of the coronavirus have appeared, and questions remain about whether China’s self-made vaccines can stop them. The latest cases have been found in Guangzhou, capital of the southern province of Guangdong. Authorities have blamed the delta variant, which has caused widespread loss of life in India. The city tested practically its entire population of 18.7 million between Sunday and Tuesday, some of them for the second time. It has also put neighborhoods with a total of more than 180,000 residents into total lockdown, with practically no one allowed out except to go to medical testing. The early infections appear to have jumped from person to person at a cluster of eateries. Each infected person has infected more other people than in any previous outbreak that China has confronted, Zhang Zhoubin, deputy director of the Guangzhou Center for Disease Control, said at a news conference. “The epidemic faced by Guangzhou this time is an unprecedented opponent, and it requires more resolute and decisive measures to deal with it,” he said. Also read | China reports 15 new locally transmitted Covid cases Test facilities in Guangzhou have been operating around the clock. Lines are long. Residents wake early to try to beat the rush but still find delays. China’s approach has evolved since the coronavirus first emerged, when Beijing initially put harsh restrictions on hundreds of millions of people. Today its lockdowns are focused on neighborhoods rather than cities or provinces. China has made vaccination the centerpiece of its strategy. Still, many of the core tenets remain for a huge and densely populated country: vast testing, strict limits on movement and intense scrutiny of arrivals from other countries. Foreign businesses have worried that those limits on international travelers could snarl their plans. A European Union Chamber of Commerce survey released this week found that three-quarters of member companies said they had been adversely affected by travel restrictions, usually by hindering them from bringing in key engineers or executives. Also read | Fresh COVID-19 outbreak rattles China, cluster grows in Guangzhou Beijing has demanded that travelers from dozens of countries spend two weeks in employer-supervised quarantine even before flying to China. Once there, travelers must spend at least two weeks and sometimes three or longer in government-supervised quarantine, even if they are fully vaccinated. Rounds of tests can turn up a possibly false positive, leading to more tests and additional days or weeks in isolation. Many foreigners in China face a choice: If they leave to visit spouses, children and other family members elsewhere, they may be unable to reenter the country later because of the pandemic restrictions. “There is absolutely a growing fatigue for a lot of the foreigners who are here,” said Jacob Gunter, senior policy and communications manager at the EU Chamber of Commerce in China. At home, China’s leaders are pushing its people to get vaccinated. It has administered about 800 million doses by the government’s count, compared with 300 million administered in the United States. Yin Weidong, chair and CEO of Sinovac Biotech, one of China’s main vaccine manufacturers, told state television Friday that Chinese regulators had approved the emergency use of vaccines in children as young as 3. Also read | China set to vaccinate 3-year-old kids: Report Still, administering 800 million doses, almost all of the vaccines require two shots, means most of China’s 1.4 billion people have not been fully vaccinated. Some people remain hesitant to get the shots, and Chinese media outlets have used the Guangzhou outbreak to encourage skeptics to get inoculated. The spread of the virus has raised fresh questions about the effectiveness of China’s vaccines, particularly against variants. The Seychelles last month and now Mongolia in the past three weeks have both had large numbers of infections despite high vaccination rates. Both have used the Sinopharm vaccine from China, although the Seychelles also relied partly on AstraZeneca vaccines. The delta variant now circulating in Guangzhou has also shown the ability in other countries to infect some people who had already been vaccinated, a phenomenon known as vaccine escape. Research elsewhere has found that to be a particular problem for people who have received only a first injection of a two-jab vaccine and are then exposed to the delta variant. Also read | As Chinese couples get approval for 3 kids, Uighur women still subjected to birth control horrors Researchers in Britain have found that receiving only the first of two shots of the Oxford-AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines may be only 30 per cent effective in preventing infection with the delta variant, said Raina MacIntyre, who heads the biosecurity program at the Kirby Institute of the University of New South Wales in Sydney. After two doses, effectiveness appears to rise to 60 per cent with the AstraZeneca vaccine and 88 per cent with Pfizer-BioNTech. “With the degree of vaccine escape there is with the delta variant, you really do need people to be fully vaccinated,” she said. Yin told China’s state-run television network Saturday that a third shot of his company’s vaccine produces a tenfold increase in antibodies within a week. But Chinese vaccine manufacturers are not yet recommending a third dose. “As far as China is concerned, in fact, completing the two-shot immunization is the most important task for all the public,” he said. In the meantime, Guangzhou has tried to turn its virus setback into a showcase for local technologies. Officials there said they had used 31 driverless shuttle vans and trucks to send food and other critical supplies into locked-down neighborhoods to avoid exposing delivery personnel. By Tuesday, Guangdong province had 157 people in the hospital with the virus and was announcing about 10 new cases per day. The province and also Guangzhou itself have banned anyone since last weekend from leaving unless they have a valid reason and a negative nucleic acid test for the virus within the preceding 48 hours. Unlike many places around the world, Guangzhou at least does not have to worry about running out of pandemic supplies: It is coincidentally a hub for manufacturing and exporting them. Chen Jianhua, chief economist of the Guangzhou Bureau of Industry and Information Technology, said at a news conference Wednesday that the city’s daily production capacity was 91 million masks and 7 million sets of coronavirus detection chemicals.

China returns to its strict Covid limits to fight a new outbreak

More than 11 million people in the northern Chinese city of Shijiazhuang have been placed into a stringent lockdown after an outbreak of Covid-19.

China places 11 mn people under lockdown as Shijazhuang witnesses dramatic rise in Covid cases

Two major airports in northeastern China now require that the departing passengers should show a negative coronavirus test taken over the previous 72 hours before they can board their planes.

The requirements by the Shenyang and Dalian airports come amid a small but persistent growth in cases in the two cities located in Liaoning province just north of the capital Beijing, and the confirmation of the first mutant virus in the country.

China on Friday reported a total of 19 new virus cases, including 10 that were brought from outside the country. A total of 370 people are in treatment for COVID-19 and another 279 are being observed in isolation for having tested positive for the disease without showing symptoms. Four new cases were announced Friday in Liaoning, along with another five cases in Beijing.

To this end, China is urging tens of millions of migrant workers to stay put during next month's annual Lunar New Year holiday, usually the world's largest annual human migration.&nbsp;

Classes are also being dismissed a week earlier than usual and tourists are being told not to come to Beijing for holidays.

Two major airports in northeastern China now require that the departing passengers should show a negative coronavirus test taken over the previous 72 hours before they can board their planes.

Two major airports in northeastern China now require that the departing passengers should show a negative coronavirus test taken over the previous 72 hours before they can board their planes. The requirements by the Shenyang and Dalian airports come amid a small but persistent growth in cases in the two cities located in Liaoning province just north of the capital Beijing, and the confirmation of the first mutant virus in the country. China on Friday reported a total of 19 new virus cases, including 10 that were brought from outside the country. A total of 370 people are in treatment for COVID-19 and another 279 are being observed in isolation for having tested positive for the disease without showing symptoms. Four new cases were announced Friday in Liaoning, along with another five cases in Beijing. To this end, China is urging tens of millions of migrant workers to stay put during next month's annual Lunar New Year holiday, usually the world's largest annual human migration. Classes are also being dismissed a week earlier than usual and tourists are being told not to come to Beijing for holidays.

Two Chinese airports now require coronavirus test results to let you travel further

In the early hours of Feb. 7, China’s powerful internet censors experienced an unfamiliar and deeply unsettling sensation. They felt they were losing control.

The news was spreading quickly that Li Wenliang, a doctor who had warned about a strange new viral outbreak only to be threatened by the police and accused of peddling rumors, had died of COVID-19. Grief and fury coursed through social media. To people at home and abroad, Li’s death showed the terrible cost of the Chinese government’s instinct to suppress inconvenient information.

Yet China’s censors decided to double down. Warning of the “unprecedented challenge” Li’s passing had posed and the “butterfly effect” it may have set off, officials got to work suppressing the inconvenient news and reclaiming the narrative, according to confidential directives sent to local propaganda workers and news outlets.

They ordered news websites not to issue push notifications alerting readers to his death. They told social platforms to gradually remove his name from trending topics pages. And they activated legions of fake online commenters to flood social sites with distracting chatter, stressing the need for discretion: “As commenters fight to guide public opinion, they must conceal their identity, avoid crude patriotism and sarcastic praise, and be sleek and silent in achieving results.”

The orders were among thousands of secret government directives and other documents that were reviewed by The New York Times and ProPublica. They lay bare in extraordinary detail the systems that helped the Chinese authorities shape online opinion during the pandemic.

At a time when digital media is deepening social divides in Western democracies, China is manipulating online discourse to enforce the Communist Party’s consensus. To stage-manage what appeared on the Chinese internet early this year, the authorities issued strict commands on the content and tone of news coverage, directed paid trolls to inundate social media with party-line blather and deployed security forces to muzzle unsanctioned voices.

Though China makes no secret of its belief in rigid internet controls, the documents convey just how much behind-the-scenes effort is involved in maintaining a tight grip. It takes an enormous bureaucracy, armies of people, specialized technology made by private contractors, the constant monitoring of digital news outlets and social media platforms — and, presumably, lots of money.

It is much more than simply flipping a switch to block certain unwelcome ideas, images or pieces of news.

China’s curbs on information about the outbreak started in early January, before the novel coronavirus had even been identified definitively, the documents show. When infections started spreading rapidly a few weeks later, the authorities clamped down on anything that cast China’s response in too “negative” a light.

The United States and other countries have for months accused China of trying to hide the extent of the outbreak in its early stages. It may never be clear whether a freer flow of information from China would have prevented the outbreak from morphing into a raging global health calamity. But the documents indicate that Chinese officials tried to steer the narrative not only to prevent panic and debunk damaging falsehoods domestically. They also wanted to make the virus look less severe — and the authorities more capable — as the rest of the world was watching.

The documents include more than 3,200 directives and 1,800 memos and other files from the offices of the country’s internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, in the eastern city of Hangzhou. They also include internal files and computer code from a Chinese company, Urun Big Data Services, that makes software used by local governments to monitor internet discussion and manage armies of online commenters.

The documents were shared with The Times and ProPublica by a hacker group that calls itself CCP Unmasked, referring to the Chinese Communist Party. The Times and ProPublica independently verified the authenticity of many of the documents, some of which had been obtained separately by China Digital Times, a website that tracks Chinese internet controls.

The CAC and Urun did not respond to requests for comment.

“China has a politically weaponized system of censorship; it is refined, organized, coordinated and supported by the state’s resources,” said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, and the founder of China Digital Times. “It’s not just for deleting something. They also have a powerful apparatus to construct a narrative and aim it at any target with huge scale.”

“This is a huge thing,” he added. “No other country has that.”

Controlling a Narrative

China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, created the Cyberspace Administration of China in 2014 to centralize the management of internet censorship and propaganda as well as other aspects of digital policy. Today, the agency reports to the Communist Party’s powerful Central Committee, a sign of its importance to the leadership.

The CAC’s coronavirus controls began in the first week of January. An agency directive ordered news websites to use only government-published material and not to draw any parallels with the deadly SARS outbreak in China and elsewhere that began in 2002, even as the World Health Organization was noting the similarities.

At the start of February, a high-level meeting led by Xi called for tighter management of digital media, and the CAC’s offices across the country swung into action. A directive in Zhejiang province, whose capital is Hangzhou, said the agency should not only control the message within China, but also seek to “actively influence international opinion.”

Agency workers began receiving links to virus-related articles that they were to promote on local news aggregators and social media. Directives specified which links should be featured on news sites’ home screens, how many hours they should remain online and even which headlines should appear in boldface.

Online reports should play up the heroic efforts by local medical workers dispatched to Wuhan, the Chinese city where the virus was first reported, as well as the vital contributions of Communist Party members, the agency’s orders said.

Headlines should steer clear of the words “incurable” and “fatal,” one directive said, “to avoid causing societal panic.” When covering restrictions on movement and travel, the word “lockdown” should not be used, said another. Multiple directives emphasized that “negative” news about the virus was not to be promoted.

When a prison officer in Zhejiang who lied about his travels caused an outbreak among the inmates, the CAC asked local offices to monitor the case closely because it “could easily attract attention from overseas.”

News outlets were told not to play up reports on donations and purchases of medical supplies from abroad. The concern, according to agency directives, was that such reports could cause a backlash overseas and disrupt China’s procurement efforts, which were pulling in vast amounts of personal protective equipment as the virus spread abroad.

“Avoid giving the false impression that our fight against the epidemic relies on foreign donations,” one directive said.

CAC workers flagged some on-the-ground videos for purging, including several that appear to show bodies exposed in public places. Other clips that were flagged appear to show people yelling angrily inside a hospital, workers hauling a corpse out of an apartment and a quarantined child crying for her mother. The videos’ authenticity could not be confirmed.

The agency asked local branches to craft ideas for “fun at home” content to “ease the anxieties of web users.” In one Hangzhou district, workers described a “witty and humorous” guitar ditty they had promoted. It went, “I never thought it would be true to say: To support your country, just sleep all day.”

Then came a bigger test.

'Severe Crackdown'

Li’s death in Wuhan loosed a geyser of emotion that threatened to tear Chinese social media out from under the CAC’s control.

It did not help when the agency’s gag order leaked onto Weibo, a popular Twitter-like platform, fueling further anger. Thousands of people flooded Li’s Weibo account with comments.

The agency had little choice but to permit expressions of grief, though only to a point. If anyone was sensationalizing the story to generate online traffic, their account should be dealt with “severely,” one directive said.

The day after Li’s death, a directive included a sample of material that was deemed to be “taking advantage of this incident to stir up public opinion”: It was a video interview in which Li’s mother reminisces tearfully about her son.

The scrutiny did not let up in the days that followed. “Pay particular attention to posts with pictures of candles, people wearing masks, an entirely black image or other efforts to escalate or hype the incident,” read an agency directive to local offices.

Larger numbers of online memorials began to disappear. The police detained several people who formed groups to archive deleted posts.

In Hangzhou, propaganda workers on round-the-clock shifts wrote up reports describing how they were ensuring people saw nothing that contradicted the soothing message from the Communist Party: that it had the virus firmly under control.

Officials in one district reported that workers in their employ had posted online comments that were read more than 40,000 times, “effectively eliminating city residents’ panic.” Workers in another county boasted of their “severe crackdown” on what they called rumors: 16 people had been investigated by the police, 14 given warnings and two detained. One district said it had 1,500 “cybersoldiers” monitoring closed chat groups on WeChat, the popular social app.

Researchers have estimated that hundreds of thousands of people in China work part time to post comments and share content that reinforces state ideology. Many of them are low-level employees at government departments and party organizations. Universities have recruited students and teachers for the task. Local governments have held training sessions for them.

Engineers of the Troll

Government departments in China have a variety of specialized software at their disposal to shape what the public sees online. One maker of such software, Urun, has won at least two dozen contracts with local agencies and state-owned enterprises since 2016, government procurement records show. According to an analysis of computer code and documents from Urun, the company’s products can track online trends, coordinate censorship activity and manage fake social media accounts for posting comments.

One Urun software system gives government workers a slick, easy-to-use interface for quickly adding likes to posts. Managers can use the system to assign specific tasks to commenters. The software can also track how many tasks a commenter has completed and how much that person should be paid.

According to one document describing the software, commenters in the southern city of Guangzhou are paid $25 for an original post longer than 400 characters. Flagging a negative comment for deletion earns them 40 cents. Reposts are worth one cent apiece.

Urun makes a smartphone app that streamlines their work. They receive tasks within the app, post the requisite comments from their personal social media accounts, then upload a screenshot, ostensibly to certify that the task was completed.

The company also makes video game-like software that helps train commenters, documents show. The software splits a group of users into two teams, one red and one blue, and pits them against each other to see which can produce more popular posts.

Other Urun code is designed to monitor Chinese social media for “harmful information.” Workers can use keywords to find posts that mention sensitive topics, such as “incidents involving leadership” or “national political affairs.” They can also manually tag posts for further review.

In Hangzhou, officials appear to have used Urun software to scan the Chinese internet for keywords like “virus” and “pneumonia” in conjunction with place names, according to company data.

&lt;b&gt;A Great Sea of Placidity&lt;/b&gt;

By the end of February, the emotional wallop of Li’s death seemed to be fading. CAC workers around Hangzhou continued to scan the internet for anything that might perturb the great sea of placidity.

One city district noted that web users were worried about how their neighborhoods were handling the trash left by people who were returning from out of town and potentially carrying the virus. Another district observed concerns about whether schools were taking adequate safety measures as students returned.

On March 12, the agency’s Hangzhou office issued a memo to all branches about new national rules for internet platforms. Local offices should set up special teams for conducting daily inspections of local websites, the memo said. Those found to have violations should be “promptly supervised and rectified.”

The Hangzhou CAC had already been keeping a quarterly score card for evaluating how well local platforms were managing their content. Each site started the quarter with 100 points. Points were deducted for failing to adequately police posts or comments. Points might also be added for standout performances.

In the first quarter of 2020, two local websites lost 10 points each for “publishing illegal information related to the epidemic,” that quarter’s score report said. A government portal received an extra two points for “participating actively in opinion guidance” during the outbreak.

Over time, the CAC offices’ reports returned to monitoring topics unrelated to the virus: noisy construction projects keeping people awake at night, heavy rains causing flooding in a train station.

Then, in late May, the offices received startling news: Confidential public-opinion analysis reports had somehow been published online. The agency ordered offices to purge internal reports — particularly, it said, those analyzing sentiment surrounding the epidemic.

The offices wrote back in their usual dry bureaucratese, vowing to “prevent such data from leaking out on the internet and causing a serious adverse impact to society.”

In the early hours of Feb. 7, China’s powerful internet censors experienced an unfamiliar and deeply unsettling sensation. They felt they were losing control. The news was spreading quickly that Li Wenliang, a doctor who had warned about a strange new viral outbreak only to be threatened by the police and accused of peddling rumors, had died of COVID-19.

In the early hours of Feb. 7, China’s powerful internet censors experienced an unfamiliar and deeply unsettling sensation. They felt they were losing control. The news was spreading quickly that Li Wenliang, a doctor who had warned about a strange new viral outbreak only to be threatened by the police and accused of peddling rumors, had died of COVID-19. Grief and fury coursed through social media. To people at home and abroad, Li’s death showed the terrible cost of the Chinese government’s instinct to suppress inconvenient information. Yet China’s censors decided to double down. Warning of the “unprecedented challenge” Li’s passing had posed and the “butterfly effect” it may have set off, officials got to work suppressing the inconvenient news and reclaiming the narrative, according to confidential directives sent to local propaganda workers and news outlets. They ordered news websites not to issue push notifications alerting readers to his death. They told social platforms to gradually remove his name from trending topics pages. And they activated legions of fake online commenters to flood social sites with distracting chatter, stressing the need for discretion: “As commenters fight to guide public opinion, they must conceal their identity, avoid crude patriotism and sarcastic praise, and be sleek and silent in achieving results.” The orders were among thousands of secret government directives and other documents that were reviewed by The New York Times and ProPublica. They lay bare in extraordinary detail the systems that helped the Chinese authorities shape online opinion during the pandemic. At a time when digital media is deepening social divides in Western democracies, China is manipulating online discourse to enforce the Communist Party’s consensus. To stage-manage what appeared on the Chinese internet early this year, the authorities issued strict commands on the content and tone of news coverage, directed paid trolls to inundate social media with party-line blather and deployed security forces to muzzle unsanctioned voices. Though China makes no secret of its belief in rigid internet controls, the documents convey just how much behind-the-scenes effort is involved in maintaining a tight grip. It takes an enormous bureaucracy, armies of people, specialized technology made by private contractors, the constant monitoring of digital news outlets and social media platforms — and, presumably, lots of money. It is much more than simply flipping a switch to block certain unwelcome ideas, images or pieces of news. China’s curbs on information about the outbreak started in early January, before the novel coronavirus had even been identified definitively, the documents show. When infections started spreading rapidly a few weeks later, the authorities clamped down on anything that cast China’s response in too “negative” a light. The United States and other countries have for months accused China of trying to hide the extent of the outbreak in its early stages. It may never be clear whether a freer flow of information from China would have prevented the outbreak from morphing into a raging global health calamity. But the documents indicate that Chinese officials tried to steer the narrative not only to prevent panic and debunk damaging falsehoods domestically. They also wanted to make the virus look less severe — and the authorities more capable — as the rest of the world was watching. The documents include more than 3,200 directives and 1,800 memos and other files from the offices of the country’s internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, in the eastern city of Hangzhou. They also include internal files and computer code from a Chinese company, Urun Big Data Services, that makes software used by local governments to monitor internet discussion and manage armies of online commenters. The documents were shared with The Times and ProPublica by a hacker group that calls itself CCP Unmasked, referring to the Chinese Communist Party. The Times and ProPublica independently verified the authenticity of many of the documents, some of which had been obtained separately by China Digital Times, a website that tracks Chinese internet controls. The CAC and Urun did not respond to requests for comment. “China has a politically weaponized system of censorship; it is refined, organized, coordinated and supported by the state’s resources,” said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, and the founder of China Digital Times. “It’s not just for deleting something. They also have a powerful apparatus to construct a narrative and aim it at any target with huge scale.” “This is a huge thing,” he added. “No other country has that.” Controlling a Narrative China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, created the Cyberspace Administration of China in 2014 to centralize the management of internet censorship and propaganda as well as other aspects of digital policy. Today, the agency reports to the Communist Party’s powerful Central Committee, a sign of its importance to the leadership. The CAC’s coronavirus controls began in the first week of January. An agency directive ordered news websites to use only government-published material and not to draw any parallels with the deadly SARS outbreak in China and elsewhere that began in 2002, even as the World Health Organization was noting the similarities. At the start of February, a high-level meeting led by Xi called for tighter management of digital media, and the CAC’s offices across the country swung into action. A directive in Zhejiang province, whose capital is Hangzhou, said the agency should not only control the message within China, but also seek to “actively influence international opinion.” Agency workers began receiving links to virus-related articles that they were to promote on local news aggregators and social media. Directives specified which links should be featured on news sites’ home screens, how many hours they should remain online and even which headlines should appear in boldface. Online reports should play up the heroic efforts by local medical workers dispatched to Wuhan, the Chinese city where the virus was first reported, as well as the vital contributions of Communist Party members, the agency’s orders said. Headlines should steer clear of the words “incurable” and “fatal,” one directive said, “to avoid causing societal panic.” When covering restrictions on movement and travel, the word “lockdown” should not be used, said another. Multiple directives emphasized that “negative” news about the virus was not to be promoted. When a prison officer in Zhejiang who lied about his travels caused an outbreak among the inmates, the CAC asked local offices to monitor the case closely because it “could easily attract attention from overseas.” News outlets were told not to play up reports on donations and purchases of medical supplies from abroad. The concern, according to agency directives, was that such reports could cause a backlash overseas and disrupt China’s procurement efforts, which were pulling in vast amounts of personal protective equipment as the virus spread abroad. “Avoid giving the false impression that our fight against the epidemic relies on foreign donations,” one directive said. CAC workers flagged some on-the-ground videos for purging, including several that appear to show bodies exposed in public places. Other clips that were flagged appear to show people yelling angrily inside a hospital, workers hauling a corpse out of an apartment and a quarantined child crying for her mother. The videos’ authenticity could not be confirmed. The agency asked local branches to craft ideas for “fun at home” content to “ease the anxieties of web users.” In one Hangzhou district, workers described a “witty and humorous” guitar ditty they had promoted. It went, “I never thought it would be true to say: To support your country, just sleep all day.” Then came a bigger test. 'Severe Crackdown' Li’s death in Wuhan loosed a geyser of emotion that threatened to tear Chinese social media out from under the CAC’s control. It did not help when the agency’s gag order leaked onto Weibo, a popular Twitter-like platform, fueling further anger. Thousands of people flooded Li’s Weibo account with comments. The agency had little choice but to permit expressions of grief, though only to a point. If anyone was sensationalizing the story to generate online traffic, their account should be dealt with “severely,” one directive said. The day after Li’s death, a directive included a sample of material that was deemed to be “taking advantage of this incident to stir up public opinion”: It was a video interview in which Li’s mother reminisces tearfully about her son. The scrutiny did not let up in the days that followed. “Pay particular attention to posts with pictures of candles, people wearing masks, an entirely black image or other efforts to escalate or hype the incident,” read an agency directive to local offices. Larger numbers of online memorials began to disappear. The police detained several people who formed groups to archive deleted posts. In Hangzhou, propaganda workers on round-the-clock shifts wrote up reports describing how they were ensuring people saw nothing that contradicted the soothing message from the Communist Party: that it had the virus firmly under control. Officials in one district reported that workers in their employ had posted online comments that were read more than 40,000 times, “effectively eliminating city residents’ panic.” Workers in another county boasted of their “severe crackdown” on what they called rumors: 16 people had been investigated by the police, 14 given warnings and two detained. One district said it had 1,500 “cybersoldiers” monitoring closed chat groups on WeChat, the popular social app. Researchers have estimated that hundreds of thousands of people in China work part time to post comments and share content that reinforces state ideology. Many of them are low-level employees at government departments and party organizations. Universities have recruited students and teachers for the task. Local governments have held training sessions for them. Engineers of the Troll Government departments in China have a variety of specialized software at their disposal to shape what the public sees online. One maker of such software, Urun, has won at least two dozen contracts with local agencies and state-owned enterprises since 2016, government procurement records show. According to an analysis of computer code and documents from Urun, the company’s products can track online trends, coordinate censorship activity and manage fake social media accounts for posting comments. One Urun software system gives government workers a slick, easy-to-use interface for quickly adding likes to posts. Managers can use the system to assign specific tasks to commenters. The software can also track how many tasks a commenter has completed and how much that person should be paid. According to one document describing the software, commenters in the southern city of Guangzhou are paid $25 for an original post longer than 400 characters. Flagging a negative comment for deletion earns them 40 cents. Reposts are worth one cent apiece. Urun makes a smartphone app that streamlines their work. They receive tasks within the app, post the requisite comments from their personal social media accounts, then upload a screenshot, ostensibly to certify that the task was completed. The company also makes video game-like software that helps train commenters, documents show. The software splits a group of users into two teams, one red and one blue, and pits them against each other to see which can produce more popular posts. Other Urun code is designed to monitor Chinese social media for “harmful information.” Workers can use keywords to find posts that mention sensitive topics, such as “incidents involving leadership” or “national political affairs.” They can also manually tag posts for further review. In Hangzhou, officials appear to have used Urun software to scan the Chinese internet for keywords like “virus” and “pneumonia” in conjunction with place names, according to company data. A Great Sea of Placidity By the end of February, the emotional wallop of Li’s death seemed to be fading. CAC workers around Hangzhou continued to scan the internet for anything that might perturb the great sea of placidity. One city district noted that web users were worried about how their neighborhoods were handling the trash left by people who were returning from out of town and potentially carrying the virus. Another district observed concerns about whether schools were taking adequate safety measures as students returned. On March 12, the agency’s Hangzhou office issued a memo to all branches about new national rules for internet platforms. Local offices should set up special teams for conducting daily inspections of local websites, the memo said. Those found to have violations should be “promptly supervised and rectified.” The Hangzhou CAC had already been keeping a quarterly score card for evaluating how well local platforms were managing their content. Each site started the quarter with 100 points. Points were deducted for failing to adequately police posts or comments. Points might also be added for standout performances. In the first quarter of 2020, two local websites lost 10 points each for “publishing illegal information related to the epidemic,” that quarter’s score report said. A government portal received an extra two points for “participating actively in opinion guidance” during the outbreak. Over time, the CAC offices’ reports returned to monitoring topics unrelated to the virus: noisy construction projects keeping people awake at night, heavy rains causing flooding in a train station. Then, in late May, the offices received startling news: Confidential public-opinion analysis reports had somehow been published online. The agency ordered offices to purge internal reports — particularly, it said, those analyzing sentiment surrounding the epidemic. The offices wrote back in their usual dry bureaucratese, vowing to “prevent such data from leaking out on the internet and causing a serious adverse impact to society.”

No ‘negative’ news: How China censored the coronavirus

China has put one northern city in lockdown and launched citywide coronavirus testing in another, after two local infections involving workers at a port and trade zone respectively, authorities have said.

There was one new case each in Dongning and Suifenhe, which both sit on the country's border with Russia.

In Dongning, a 40-year-old maintenance worker at a port tested positive on Thursday, triggering the latest measures.

Officials there said Saturday it would enter "wartime mode" -- temporarily suspending public bus services and road transport, while requiring anyone leaving the city to produce a negative Covid-19 test from the preceding 24 hours.

Schools will suspend classes and dine-in will be banned at restaurants, while in higher-risk areas only one member of each household will be allowed to leave the home once every two days to buy daily necessities -- for no longer than two hours each time.

In the Suifenhe case, a 39-year-old man who works as a loading and unloading worker at a trade zone tested positive.

Both cities on Friday announced the launch of citywide testing, expected to be completed in three days.

China -- where the virus first surfaced late last year -- has largely brought domestic transmission under control but recently reported local outbreaks in several cities.

State media blamed the recent clusters on imports of frozen food and other shipments.

After a recent outbreak in Chengdu, officials said the virus was found on food stored in an elderly couple's fridge.

There is currently no evidence that people can catch Covid-19 from food or food packaging, according to the World Health Organisation.

China has put one northern city in lockdown and launched citywide coronavirus testing in another, after two local infections involving workers at a port and trade zone respectively, authorities have said.

China has put one northern city in lockdown and launched citywide coronavirus testing in another, after two local infections involving workers at a port and trade zone respectively, authorities have said. There was one new case each in Dongning and Suifenhe, which both sit on the country's border with Russia. In Dongning, a 40-year-old maintenance worker at a port tested positive on Thursday, triggering the latest measures. Officials there said Saturday it would enter "wartime mode" -- temporarily suspending public bus services and road transport, while requiring anyone leaving the city to produce a negative Covid-19 test from the preceding 24 hours. Schools will suspend classes and dine-in will be banned at restaurants, while in higher-risk areas only one member of each household will be allowed to leave the home once every two days to buy daily necessities -- for no longer than two hours each time. In the Suifenhe case, a 39-year-old man who works as a loading and unloading worker at a trade zone tested positive. Both cities on Friday announced the launch of citywide testing, expected to be completed in three days. China -- where the virus first surfaced late last year -- has largely brought domestic transmission under control but recently reported local outbreaks in several cities. State media blamed the recent clusters on imports of frozen food and other shipments. After a recent outbreak in Chengdu, officials said the virus was found on food stored in an elderly couple's fridge. There is currently no evidence that people can catch Covid-19 from food or food packaging, according to the World Health Organisation.

China coronavirus cases on Russia border spark lockdowns, tests

Chinese state media have cited the presence of the novel coronavirus on imported frozen food packaging, as well as scientific papers,&nbsp;claiming that the coronavirus was circulating in Europe earlier than previously believed, as evidence that China may not have been its origin.

“#COVID19 did not start in central China’s Wuhan but may come through imported frozen food and packaging: experts,” said a Wednesday Facebook post by the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily.

Unlike other countries, China cites frozen food packaging as a risk of spreading COVID-19. It has stepped up inspections and made a spate of announcements that the virus was found on chilled food packaging, prompting rejections of goods and complaints from exporters, even though the World Health Organization says neither food nor packaging is a known transmission route.

To this end,&nbsp;the World Health Organisation's top emergency expert said on Friday it would be "highly speculative" for the WHO to say the coronavirus did not emerge in China, where it was first identified in a food market in December last year.

China is pushing a narrative via state media that the virus existed abroad before it was discovered in the central city of Wuhan, citing the presence of coronavirus on imported frozen food packaging and scientific papers claiming it had been circulating in Europe last year.

"I think it`s highly speculative for us to say that the disease did not emerge in China," Mike Ryan said at a virtual briefing in Geneva after being asked if COVID-19 could have first emerged outside China.

He repeated that the WHO intended to send researchers to the Wuhan food market to probe the virus origins further. 
The WHO has been accused by the Trump administration of being "China-centric", allegations it has repeatedly denied.

The Global Times, a nationalist tabloid published by the People’s Daily, has also promoted the theory that COVID-19 originated outside China.

“When and where did the virus start circulating? Tracing the virus cannot answer all questions, but it is very likely that the virus had co-existed in multiple places before being spotted in Wuhan,” Zeng Guang, former chief epidemiologist of China’s Center for Disease Control, said in Tuesday’s Global Times.

The fact that it was detected first in Wuhan was a testament to the strength of China’s infectious disease prevention system, which was developed in response to the SARS outbreak in 2002-2003, Zeng also said last week.

SEWAGE SAMPLES

Speculation and conspiracy theories over the virus’s origins have abounded, fuelled by China’s early suppression of information and its resistance to providing access to overseas experts. In March, a foreign ministry spokesman suggested that the U.S. army brought the virus to Wuhan.

The Chinese government’s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, has also said it was unclear whether the virus originated in China, while the foreign ministry has said the origin is a scientific matter and has rebuked countries that point to China as the source, including the United States and Australia.

Zeng and Chinese state media have cited a paper published by Italy’s National Cancer Institute which said COVID-19 antibodies had been found in samples of cancer patients taken there in October last year.

Another paper published earlier this year claimed to have found traces of SARS-Cov-2 in the sewage system of Barcelona in samples taken in March 2019.

Both studies have drawn criticism in the West.

“Strong claims supported by flimsy evidence get widely reported without the necessary scrutiny and consideration of a wider body of available evidence,” Francois Balloux, a geneticist at University College London, said on Twitter.

He said that even if the virus was present in Italy in September, it doesn’t necessarily mean it originated there.

“One strong line of evidence is that by far the closest virus we know to SARS-Cov-2 is circulating in bats in China. Moving the timeline, you could still have essentially the same origin in East Asia, and most likely China, which then would spread to other parts of the world,” he told Reuters.

“That would not change the narrative about the origin.”

But Peter Ben Embarek, WHO’s expert in animal diseases, appeared to open the door to other possible origins than Wuhan in remarks at a social media event in Geneva on Wednesday.

He said it would be important to investigate whether the market workers had “some commonalities outside Wuhan, in some of the countryside or provinces or farming environments or hunting environments in southern China or perhaps even outside China?”

Chinese state media have cited the presence of the novel coronavirus on imported frozen food packaging, as well as scientific papers, claiming that the coronavirus was circulating in Europe earlier than previously believed, as evidence that China may not have been its origin.

Chinese state media have cited the presence of the novel coronavirus on imported frozen food packaging, as well as scientific papers, claiming that the coronavirus was circulating in Europe earlier than previously believed, as evidence that China may not have been its origin. “#COVID19 did not start in central China’s Wuhan but may come through imported frozen food and packaging: experts,” said a Wednesday Facebook post by the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily. Unlike other countries, China cites frozen food packaging as a risk of spreading COVID-19. It has stepped up inspections and made a spate of announcements that the virus was found on chilled food packaging, prompting rejections of goods and complaints from exporters, even though the World Health Organization says neither food nor packaging is a known transmission route. To this end, the World Health Organisation's top emergency expert said on Friday it would be "highly speculative" for the WHO to say the coronavirus did not emerge in China, where it was first identified in a food market in December last year. China is pushing a narrative via state media that the virus existed abroad before it was discovered in the central city of Wuhan, citing the presence of coronavirus on imported frozen food packaging and scientific papers claiming it had been circulating in Europe last year. "I think it`s highly speculative for us to say that the disease did not emerge in China," Mike Ryan said at a virtual briefing in Geneva after being asked if COVID-19 could have first emerged outside China. He repeated that the WHO intended to send researchers to the Wuhan food market to probe the virus origins further. The WHO has been accused by the Trump administration of being "China-centric", allegations it has repeatedly denied. The Global Times, a nationalist tabloid published by the People’s Daily, has also promoted the theory that COVID-19 originated outside China. “When and where did the virus start circulating? Tracing the virus cannot answer all questions, but it is very likely that the virus had co-existed in multiple places before being spotted in Wuhan,” Zeng Guang, former chief epidemiologist of China’s Center for Disease Control, said in Tuesday’s Global Times. The fact that it was detected first in Wuhan was a testament to the strength of China’s infectious disease prevention system, which was developed in response to the SARS outbreak in 2002-2003, Zeng also said last week. SEWAGE SAMPLES Speculation and conspiracy theories over the virus’s origins have abounded, fuelled by China’s early suppression of information and its resistance to providing access to overseas experts. In March, a foreign ministry spokesman suggested that the U.S. army brought the virus to Wuhan. The Chinese government’s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, has also said it was unclear whether the virus originated in China, while the foreign ministry has said the origin is a scientific matter and has rebuked countries that point to China as the source, including the United States and Australia. Zeng and Chinese state media have cited a paper published by Italy’s National Cancer Institute which said COVID-19 antibodies had been found in samples of cancer patients taken there in October last year. Another paper published earlier this year claimed to have found traces of SARS-Cov-2 in the sewage system of Barcelona in samples taken in March 2019. Both studies have drawn criticism in the West. “Strong claims supported by flimsy evidence get widely reported without the necessary scrutiny and consideration of a wider body of available evidence,” Francois Balloux, a geneticist at University College London, said on Twitter. He said that even if the virus was present in Italy in September, it doesn’t necessarily mean it originated there. “One strong line of evidence is that by far the closest virus we know to SARS-Cov-2 is circulating in bats in China. Moving the timeline, you could still have essentially the same origin in East Asia, and most likely China, which then would spread to other parts of the world,” he told Reuters. “That would not change the narrative about the origin.” But Peter Ben Embarek, WHO’s expert in animal diseases, appeared to open the door to other possible origins than Wuhan in remarks at a social media event in Geneva on Wednesday. He said it would be important to investigate whether the market workers had “some commonalities outside Wuhan, in some of the countryside or provinces or farming environments or hunting environments in southern China or perhaps even outside China?”

With frozen food clampdown, China questions theory of coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan

GENEVA — On a cold weekend in mid-February, when the world still harbored false hope that the new coronavirus could be contained, a World Health Organization team arrived in Beijing to study the outbreak and investigate a critical question: How did the virus jump from animals to humans?

In hunt for virus source, WHO let China take charge