China Bans Rural Workers from Holiday Visits to Family amid Coronavirus Surge

The Chinese government on Sunday ordered rural migrant workers in Shaanxi province not to make their traditional annual visits to family during the Lunar New Year and Spring Festival holidays.

The restrictions were part of a growing atmosphere of panic around the coronavirus outbreak in Shaanxi’s capital of Xi’an, even as the Chinese Communist regime insists a mere handful of cases have been detected.

Before the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, China’s Spring Festival travel season was described as the largest regular human migration in the world. China has about 300 million migrant laborers who view the holiday as their best opportunity to return to rural hometowns and visit their families.

China’s state-run Global Times on Sunday spun the situation as basically under control, quoting “experts” who predicted the Xi’an outbreak would be curbed within two to four weeks.

“If out-of-town workers and students return home for the two holidays, there exist the potential risks of epidemic spread in rural areas, and our current focus is to prevent such spillovers,” said Shaanxi’s vice-head of agriculture Zhang Ying’an, explaining the need for travel restrictions.

The Chinese government claims less than 500 coronavirus infections have been detected in Xi’an, none of them fatal and only four of them severe. After some “chaotic” early missteps, for which local officials have been chastised and punished, the city is supposedly under an “orderly” lockdown.

“So far, the outbreak has affected six places in five provincial regions, including Xianyang and Yan’an in Shaanxi, Zhoukou in Central China’s Henan Province, Dongguan in South China’s Guangdong Province, and Beijing,” the Global Times reported. 

Various “experts” in Xi’an and Beijing told the Global Times this particular outbreak has a “complex” and “unclear” chain of transmission, making its origins difficult to pin down. The outbreak supposedly began with some visitors from Pakistan, since the Chinese regime claims it completely eliminated domestic transmission last year.

The South China Morning Post (SCMP) saw clouds of disinfectant billowing over Xi’an on Sunday, a “full-scale deep cleaning” operation conducted with only a few hours of warning to the city’s inhabitants.

“Residents were asked to close their doors and windows ahead of Sunday’s deep cleaning of the city, and to bring in any laundry from open balconies. They were also advised to avoid touching building exteriors, as well as plants and trees, and to wash their hands if they did come into contact with any external surfaces,” the SCMP reported.

At 6:00 p.m. local time, personnel in full protective gear began spraying the city’s streets, subway system, government buildings, and even the empty air with unidentified chemicals. Trucks rolled down the streets blasting out a thick fog of chemicals.

Several virologists told the SCMP this ominous disinfection routine was “excessive,” wasteful, possibly harmful, and almost certainly theatrical. Massive outdoor disinfection operations are contrary to the Chinese government’s coronavirus response protocols, and sealing ventilation systems while those chemical trucks roll down the streets could actually make the infection situation inside the buildings worse.

A sweaty Global Times editorial on Christmas Eve suggested the point of these disinfection theatrics, draconian lockdowns, mass testing, and travel restrictions are to sustain China’s “zero Covid” illusion until the Winter Olympics are over.

Naturally, the Chinese Communist propaganda newspaper insisted the big story is the “raging Omicron variant overseas,” especially in the United States. China, on the other hand, can rely on “timely and precise measures, experience in quelling local outbreaks and high vaccination rate among the Chinese population” to ensure the Olympics are safe.