Beijing has reintroduced a few minor restrictions (all off-campus and “offline” sports activities for teens would be cancelled starting Sunday). Earlier a spokesperson for the city’s government said a recent outbreak “The recent outbreak … is strongly explosive in nature and widespread in scope“. Which does not sound too good at all.

Even Chinese Communist Party controlled state media is sweating on the latest developments. On the Beijing outbreak referred to above:

• The Global Times reporter learned that some districts in Chaoyang have been locked down for 10 days starting Saturday for being found related to the outbreak.

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Shanghai appears to be back-pedalling a little too. Its China’s largest city of around 25mn people and a key economic hub.

• Authorities ordered PCR testing for all residents in 15 of Shanghai’s 16 districts this weekend, and five districts barred residents from leaving home during the testing period.

Yikes, 5 of 25 districts locked down for the weekend. Its a roller-coaster (not the fun type) there.

There is no end in sight to China’s COVID zero policy. President Xi Jinping with a motivational talk said:

• “Persistence is victory, We must unswervingly adhere to the general policy of ‘dynamic clearing’, strengthen confidence, eliminate interference, overcome paralysing thoughts, pay close attention to the key tasks of epidemic prevention and control, and resolutely consolidate the hard-won results of epidemic prevention and control.”