Via the South China Morning Post: Beijing battles ‘explosive coronavirus outbreak’ as food market cases mount. Excerpt:
Beijing is battling an “explosive outbreak” of the coronavirus, with health authorities reporting 36 new local infections in the city in one day – all linked to a food market.
As scientists try to track how the latest outbreak in Beijing emerged, the capital and neighbouring regions have stepped up emergency measures, including renewing lockdowns.
The capital has had 79 new local cases since last Thursday, all of which are linked to the Xinfadi wholesale market in the city’s southwestern district of Fengtai.
Covering 112 hectares, the centre is the biggest of its kind in Asia and supplies food to northern provinces.
Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist with the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, told Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily on Monday afternoon that the situation was very serious.
“Beijing is facing explosive and concentrated outbreaks even though the national epidemic has basically been blocked,” Wu said.
“The fact that it happened in Xinfadi, a large wholesale market, is a challenge in itself as we try to carry out epidemiological investigations.”
Authorities have locked down 21 residential estates in Fengtai and the northern district of Haidian, which is also home to a big food market. Access to the areas is strictly controlled and mass coronavirus testing is under way.
The municipal government has asked people who have been to the Xinfadi market over the past 14 days to stay at home, while a press conference on China’s economic development scheduled for Monday morning was abruptly cancelled.
On Sunday, Chinese Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan pledged “firm and decisive measures” to stop the spread.
Elsewhere, Baoding in the neighbouring province of Hebei reported a cluster of three patients and an asymptomatic case in one family. A 31-year-old seafood dealer at Xinfadi, his 53-year-old mother-in-law and six-year-old daughter all visited the market early this month and tested positive for the coronavirus. The man’s 31-year-old pregnant wife also tested positive but had no symptoms. She visited two medical centres for maternity checks last week.
Authorities in Chengdu, in southwestern Sichuan province, said a woman who flew into the city last Tuesday tested positive, as did her husband in Beijing.
The Liaoning provincial health authority said two close contacts of a confirmed patient in Beijing were confirmed to be infected on Saturday.
Administrations around the country have responded with preventive measures. Baoding said it would remain in “wartime” mode, while Liaoning in the north and Xiamen in Fujian province in the southeast have ordered that all people returning from some parts of Beijing isolate for 14 days. Daqing in Heilongjiang province in the northeast has demanded 21 days of isolation for travellers from Beijing.
