China: lockdown fears spark panic buying in Beijing

In China, Beijing was hit by a wave of panic buying on Thursday as residents rushed to stock up essentials amid fears of an impending Covid-19-related lockdown and banning of home deliveries beginning on Friday. Residents, especially in the hard hit Chaoyang district, lined up in long and tense queues on Thursday afternoon following speculation that the city will be going in for at least a three-day “quiet period”, which means staying at home without access to deliveries and only stepping out to be tested for Covid-19.Shops and vegetable markets in many places were cleaned up by early evening. Xu Hejian, a Beijing government spokesperson, denied the lockdown rumours and said the city’s some 22 million residents don’t need to be nervous about food supply and that deliveries would not be halted. Xu, however, urged people to stay and work from home for the next three days.

The city further tightened Covid-19 curbs on Thursday, restricting access for taxis to sections of the capital with most cases of Covid-19. As a result, millions of Beijing residents could not use taxi-hailing services with all cabs and cars operating on ride-hailing apps banned from entering the southern part of Chaoyang district and all of Fangshan and Shunyi districts.Many apartment complexes have also been sealed off because Covid-19 cases or close contacts of those infected have been tracked there. The city government also said that it will conduct three more rounds of consecutive mass testing for people living in the city’s 11 main districts and one economic zone through the weekend.