My sources say that PCR-confirmed positive covid cases in the city of shijiazhuang has surged from 1 case to 40 cases to 180 cases over the past 3 days.
The city is under a soft lockdown, until 11million PCR tests (the entire city) are completed for the next 3 days.
Expect to see reports from official channels in 2-3 days.
It appears that every Chinese province has a covid PCR testing capacity of 4 million tests per day (6-8hr turnaround time)
US has a capacity 2.2 million tests per day (24-48 hr turnaround) for the entire country.
Chinese New Year travel is probably going to be canceled for the 2nd year in China.
Chinese schools are not yet in Winter break until early Feb.
Thus, the risk of rapid spreading is pretty high.
They probably should have planned a two-month winter break, compensated by a shortened one-month summer break, for 2021.
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Private gathering limited to 10 people and fewer.
Intracity travel now discouraged
Quarantine for international arrivals has been increased to 14 days (in dedicated hotels) + 14 days (at home)
The restrictions are likely to last until early March.
They have started mass inoculation, but interestingly they prioritize high-risk working population for now. No news yet on when 65+yo would start to receive their vaccine.
Vaccine hesitance is pretty high at the moment in China, because of a couple of high-profile counterfeit vaccine scandals in the past two years (nothing to do with the covid vaccine makers though)
IMO, there is a 70% chance that Trump will issue an America-first executive order on $PFE and $MRNA vaccines soon after FDA EUA on $MRNA vaccine.
2/ should that happen, PFE and MRNA would not be able to export COVID vaccine to other countries. until the need in the US is met.
This means most countries in the world, except for UK, Canada, Germany and China, would be denied access to COVID vaccines until March 2021.
3/ UK and Canada gambled by approving PFE vaccine faster than US FDA, to rush ahead of Trump export ban. This probably is the right decision, given the political dynamics.
Germany and China have their own productive capacity, but are unlikely to supply RoW by March 2021.
Also, reportedly Ant wanted to issue consumer-debt backed ABS in China, which made regulators even more nervous.
3/ It seems that the regulators believed that Ant has the ambition to be a commercial bank, an investment bank, and maybe a shadow central bank in CNY.