Guangzhou to reopen subdistricts gradually

Eleven subdistricts in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, have started to lift blockages from Monday, according to the official website of the city's government.

These are in the city's Haizhu, Baiyun, Tianhe, Huangpu and Baiyun districts that have been closed off over coronavirus concerns.

Chen Bin, deputy director of the Guangzhou municipal health commission, said on Monday that the reopenings will be approached in a safe and orderly way in the weeks to come once the number of COVID-19 cases detected in the city has begun to decline.

"Relevant departments will gradually lift the blockages when the subdistricts have met the requirements," Chen said at a new conference on Monday.

After an assessment by experts and disinfection of public venues, the subdistricts will be opened, assuming first that all residents have negative results in three rounds of virus testing in two weeks and all close contacts of previously confirmed cases in the subdistricts have been quarantined, Chen said.

Meanwhile all the samples collected in the public venues of the subdistricts are required to be negative, she added.

The southern metropolis reported only four new locally transmitted confirmed cases on Sunday, all of which were detected in the city's medium- and high-risk areas and among the key groups of Guangzhou residents during mass screenings. The city detected six local transmitted confirmed cases on Saturday.

Guangzhou's latest confirmed cases, detected on Sunday, pushed the city's total number of COVID-19 cases to 146, including 139 patients and seven asymptomatic carriers, in this round of the outbreak, which started on May 21.

Of those, eight have recovered and have been discharged from the hospital.

To prevent the spread of the coronavirus, the subdistricts were closed for stricter management in recent weeks. But the lives of residents in those subdistricts have not been affected much, Chen said.

Amosov Gennady, a business representative from Russia, said the supermarket in his subdistrict, Liwan, began to sell meat and vegetables through WeChat groups and the government also arranged for trucks to serve the subdistricts with meat, eggs, vegetables, rice, noodles and edible oil, with prices remaining stable after the closures.

"Volunteers frequently came to guide me how to shop online and take nucleic acid tests," he said.

Gennady said he has taken three of the tests so far, and it took him less than 15 minutes each time.

Li Bin, deputy general manager of Guangzhou Lingnan Group, a major State-owned tourism and food company in Guangzhou, said his company has had access to sufficient grain, edible oil and food to put on the market to meet demand from local residents in previous weeks.

Zhao Liping, general manger of Guangzhou Restaurant Group, said his company has also supplied food, semifinished products, raw materials, snacks and related frozen food to the closed subdistricts in the previous weeks.