Hebei residents asked to avoid trips to Beijing

In order to reduce COVID-19 infection risks, Hebei province asked residents not to go to Beijing if not absolutely necessary.

People who need to travel to Beijing should bring a negative nucleic acid test result within 72 hours before arriving to enter the capital.

Those people who live in Hebei province and work in Beijing should bring three documents to enter the capital, namely the residential identification from their communities, certificate of employment from their workplace in Beijing and a negative nucleic acid test result within 14 days. In particular, they should bring a negative nucleic acid test result within 72 hours during the first entry.

According to a previous Chinese report, there are around 300,000 people living in Yanjiao, a city in Hebei, commuting to Beijing for work every day.

Zhang Wei, a cross-city commuter who lives in Langfang, a city in Hebei, said she will ask her company if she can work from home since she predicted that there will be a long queue at the checkpoint on the way to Beijing.

"Even there is not a checkpoint, it takes me around two hours to go to work. If they check the cars one by one, it will definitely double the time I spend to go to work," she said.

Another commuter in Langfang who is a driver at a company in Xicheng district in Beijing, said he has to get all those documents ready as soon as possible.

"I understand the measure, which is to protect people's lives. I will cooperate."

He said he used to spend five hours during the epidemic period in February last year to go to work, also because of the strict checkpoint regulations.

Hebei province reported 51 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 69 asymptomatic carriers on Thursday, all locally transmitted, bringing its total of recently confirmed cases to 90 and local asymptomatic carriers to 144, according to the Health Commission of Hebei.