Daily US Times: As new coronavirus spike has detected in China’s capital Beijing, millions of people in the city are living under renewed restrictions including travel ban. Authorities of Beijing reported 31 new cases on Wednesday, making the total to 137 in the past week.
Chinese capital had gone 57 days without a locally-transmitted case before the recent spike.
The outbreak is believed to have started in the massive Xinfandi food market – some believe the biggest wholesale market in entire Asia – that supplies 80% of the city’s meat and vegetables.
What are the new restrictions?
Local authorities were very quick to act when they found the cases in Beijing. The immediately shut down the market and tt least 27 neighbourhoods have been classed as medium risk and one neighbourhood is high risk, which is near the market.
People in low-risk areas can leave, but need to test negative first, while people in medium or high-risk areas are banned to travel or leave the city.
Getting a test is difficult, as three testing stations told the BBC there were no tests available until July. Queues were seen outside other centres.
Railway services have been reduced and a number of flights also have been canceled until at least 9 July.
College, middle school and primary school classes are suspended, sports teams cannot play, and swimming pools and gyms are closed.
However, roads are open, and factories and companies can still work. The city is on a “level two” alert, the second-highest.
Where did the outbreak begin?
Local media said the virus was discovered on chopping boards used for imported salmon at the Xinfandi market.
The outbreak has already spread to the provinces of Hebei and Liaoning, where a total of five new cases were found to be close contacts of patients in Beijing. as it is surging, local authorities trying to impose wartime measures to contain the virus
The new cluster in Beijing has sent shock waves across China. Beijing’s municipal government spokesman Xu Hejian on Sunday described it as “an extraordinary period”.
Chinese state media has repeatedly sid China’s effective steps in containing the virus as the number of deaths and infections surged abroad, contrasting its success with the failures of Western governments, especially the US.
Beijing previously considered among the country’s safest cities, but the sudden reemergence of the virus has raised the prospect of a second wave of infections and the possible reintroduction of the types of sweeping lockdowns that had previously brought much of the country to a halt and hammered the economy.
