China closing county near Myanmar for mass virus testing
Jul 23, 2021, 9:43 PM | Updated: 10:38 pm
BEIJING (AP) — Everyone in a county in China’s southwest near Myanmar will be tested for the coronavirus following a spike in infections, the government announced Saturday.
Businesses, schools and markets in Jiangcheng County in Yunnan province will close Monday and Tuesday while nucleic acid testing is carried out, the government said. Travel into and out of the county will be prohibited.
Yunnan has reported a spike in infections traced to nearby Myanmar, where a military government that seized power in February is struggling to contain a surge in cases. Beijing has tightened border controls.
Jiangcheng County, southeast of the city of Pu’er, is on China’s border with Vietnam and Laos. It doesn’t directly border Myanmar.
On Saturday, the Yunnan health agency reported five new infections, all in people it said lived recently in Myanmar.
That increased Yunan’s current total of people who are being treated for confirmed infections to 297, including 218 believed to have been infected abroad.
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