A medical worker collects throat swab of a resident in Beijing’s Fengtai District on Monday
BEIJING is scrambling to control a new coronavirus outbreak in Beijing that has neared 80 infections in just four days, posing the biggest test of the country's containment strategy since the disease first emerged in Wuhan.
The authorities yesterday announced 49 new Covid-19 cases nationwide, 36 linked to Beijing's biggest fruit and vegetable market, Xinfadi, in Fengtai district.
City officials are fanning out across housing compounds, knocking on doors to ask residents if they have been to or had contact with anyone who has visited the market.
As of yesterday, more than 20 residential compounds across Beijing had been locked down. Security checks were ramped up elsewhere in the capital. Some firms told their staff to work from home, and the reopening of elementary schools for first to third-graders was delayed.
Beijing has entered "an extraordinary period" and is now "operating in wartime mode", the city authorities said yesterday.
"Resolute and decisive measures are needed to prevent further spread," Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan said on Sunday.
A man wheeling his bicycle past a one-day closure sign at the entrance of a convenience store that sells produce from the Xinfadi wholesale market in Beijing
The abrupt resurgence of cases in the capital of more than 20 million people threatens to disrupt the hard-won normalisation of everyday life after China quelled its first epidemic months ago.
The outbreak in Beijing - China's cultural and political centre where its business elites and political leadership reside - could be a reckoning for the Asian giant's strategy of aggressive virus control.
Beijing - which had gone 55 days during which its only new infections were citizens returning from abroad - has reported a total of 79 cases since last Thursday.
"The next three days are crucial for Beijing because those who might have been infected from Xinfadi are likely to develop symptoms in the next few days," Dr Wu Zunyou, the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention's chief expert, told CCTV yesterday.
The deputy head of the district that is home to the market, as well as the market's general manager, have been dismissed.
Several neighbourhoods in Beijing, including the financial district that is home to the headquarters of China's biggest banks and financial firms, saw their risk levels raised to medium from low.
A medical worker collects throat swab of a resident in Beijing’s Fengtai District on Monday
A man wheeling his bicycle past a one-day closure sign at the entrance of a convenience store that sells produce from the Xinfadi wholesale market in Beijing
