China reported 27 more cases of coronavirus in Beijing on Tuesday. (File)
Beijing:
The coronavirus situation in the Chinese capital is “extremely serious,” a city official warned on Tuesday, when 27 new infections were reported in Beijing where a new cluster has launched a huge screening and testing program.
The resurgence of COVID-19 – which is said to have started on the vast Xinfadi wholesale food market in the capital – raised alarms, with China largely controlling its epidemic thanks to mass tests and blockades imposed earlier in the year. ‘year.
The new cases have brought the number of confirmed infections in Beijing in the past five days to 106, authorities have locked up nearly 30 communities in the city and tested tens of thousands of people.
“The epidemic situation in the capital is extremely serious,” Beijing city spokesman Xu Hejian warned at a press conference.
The World Health Organization has already expressed concern about the cluster, stressing the size and connectivity of Beijing.
Capital officials said they would test the owners and managers of stalls at all of the city’s food markets, restaurants and government canteens.
Beijing’s coronavirus testing capacity has been expanded to 90,000 a day, according to the official Chinese news agency Xinhua.
The capital’s transport committee on Tuesday banned taxi and car transportation from leaving the city, Xinhua said, in another measure to contain the new epidemic.
As of Monday, all of Beijing’s indoor sports and entertainment sites have been closed, and some other cities in China have warned that they will quarantine those arriving from the capital.
The National Health Commission also reported four new domestic infections in Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing, and one case reported in southwest Sichuan province was linked to the Beijing cluster.
Authorities were also racing to find the Beijingers who had traveled to other parts of China, and those who visited the capital were encouraged to get tested.
Beijing spokesman Xu said, “High-risk people who have left Beijing should immediately inform local authorities.”
Market inspections
Authorities closed another market on Tuesday – Tiantaohonglian in central Xicheng district – after an employee was diagnosed with COVID-19, public television CCTV reported.
Seven residential properties surrounding this market have also been closed.
In total, Beijing officials said on Tuesday they had disinfected 276 agricultural markets, closed 11 markets and disinfected more than 33,000 food and beverage companies in an effort to eliminate the new cluster.
Authorities warned Sunday that since May 30, 200,000 people have visited the Xinfadi market – the site of the new outbreak.
More than 8,000 Xinfadi workers have been tested and sent to central quarantine facilities.
Until this recent epidemic, most cases from China in the past few months have been nationals returning home as the pandemic spread to other countries.
The China Center for Disease Control and Prevention said on Monday that the virus strain found during the Beijing epidemic was “a major epidemic strain in European countries”.
While the virus has been detected on cutting boards used to handle imported salmon in Xinfadi, “this does not clearly or definitively indicate that it comes from imported seafood,” said Wu Zunyou, the epidemiologist in. head of the organization, in an interview with the state broadcaster CCTV.
“Since new cases suddenly appeared in Beijing, we have been trying to understand the reasons for the outbreak because no cases of COVID-19 have been found in the past two months,” said Wu Zunyou.
“We have offered several possibilities, and the most likely one is that the carrier of the new coronavirus came from outside China or other parts of China and brought him here.”
Eight other imported cases were reported on Tuesday.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
