Love in the time of coronavirus: A quiet Valentine's Day in China
BEIJING, China — It
Instead, the 24-year-old and her Ukrainian partner have spent
Couples around China settled for a quiet Valentine's Day this year, with COVID-19 intruding as an unwelcome third-wheel in romantic celebrations.
The new disease has infected nearly 64,000 people and killed
Businesses around the country from florists to concert halls closed shop and axed events, leaving couples with no choice but to spend the night in.
For Jiang and her boyfriend, that meant a lot of mahjong.
"We play two to three hours every day," said Jiang, who met her partner, a tech entrepreneur, while studying in London.
"Having started learning from zero, he's now very skilled," she added.
In Beijing, Valentine's Day specials aimed at couples
Valentine's Day this year "won't be that different from daily life under quarantine," said Tyra Li, who lives in Beijing with her boyfriend of nearly three years.
Since Lunar New Year, aside from a trip to see family, the couple has only left the house to buy groceries
"There definitely won't be any flowers," the 33-year-old told AFP. "I don't dare to receive them and he doesn't dare to buy them."
Business of love
The risk of infection, which has left most
Flower shop
Lu Ting, chief China economist at Nomura, said in a Tuesday report that the "return rate" of workers for China's four Tier-1 cities was only 19.4 percent as of February 9, far below 66.7 percent a year ago.
A worker at
China's wedding industry has also taken a hit, with the Chinese government urging couples to delay their nuptials earlier this month.
Zhu He, 25, who downsized her wedding
That's
"We had planned to go together (with my parents)," she told AFP. "Now, they won't come even though we all live in Guangzhou."
"They both can't drive and I don't really trust public transport," said Zhu, worried about the risk of infection.
Together in spirit
The new coronavirus has also complicated romantic trysts, with many cities across China closing off neighbourhoods to outside visitors
The trip
But on the second day, the district where Miao was staying reported a confirmed case of the virus.
"She was really worried," Miao told AFP. "
For Shaw Wan, 28, who works on short documentaries in Beijing, the epidemic has separated her and her boyfriend
"I don't really want him to return either
But there is some silver lining to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Li in Beijing said staying cooped up at home had meant more time with her boyfriend
And for Miao and her girlfriend, who are in a long-distance relationship, volunteering in epidemic relief work has brought them closer together.
The two students help residents and communities in Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, with remote tasks
"There is a feeling of working together," she told AFP. "Even if we cannot be together physically, in some sense we are."
Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says on Sunday that he had contracted COVID-19, testing positive at a key point in his flailing campaign for re-election.
Hipkins saYS on his official social media feed that he would need to isolate for up to five days -- less than two weeks before his country's general election.
The leader of the centre-left Labour Party said he started to experience cold symptoms on Saturday and had cancelled most of his weekend engagements. — AFP
The World Health Organization and US health authorities say Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.
The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance "due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.
So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States. — AFP
The World Health Organization says on Friday that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, days after designating a new "variant of interest".
The WHO declared in May that Covid is no longer a global health emergency, but has warned that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
In its weekly update, the UN agency said that nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6, an 80% increase compared to the previous 28 days. — AFP
The head of US intelligence says that there was no evidence that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab.
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Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street when he was prime minister, a UK parliament committee ruled on Thursday.
The cross-party Privileges Committee said Johnson, 58, would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for "repeated contempts (of parliament) and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".
But he avoided any formal sanction by his peers in the House of Commons by resigning as an MP last week.
In his resignation statement last Friday, Johnson pre-empted publication of the committee's conclusions, claiming a political stitch-up, even though the body has a majority from his own party.
He was unrepentant again on Thursday, accusing the committee of being "anti-democratic... to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".
Calling it "beneath contempt", he said it was "for the people of this to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman", the veteran opposition Labour MP who chaired the seven-person committee. — AFP
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