Beijing is experiencing its worst COVID-19 outbreak in more than eight months, fuelled by tourists returning from northwest China's Inner Mongolia and Ningxia Hui autonomous regions as well as Gansu, Shaanxi and Shanxi provinces.
By Thursday, Beijing had reported 27 infections, all identified as having the Delta variant similar to those found earlier in Inner Mongolia and Gansu.
The spread so far can be traced back to three sources. The first Beijing case traveled on the same train with a confirmed case from Ningxia on October 15. The other two sources were two separate tour groups returning from northwest China.
A cold chain truck driver and his employer were detained for counterfeiting a negative nucleic acid test report to enter Beijing as the city tightens its entry and exit policy amid sporadic cases.
The driver was found with a test report that did not match his identity on Tuesday afternoon. He claimed his employer had sent him the report. The employer was summoned for investigation and confessed that he fabricated the report for the driver.
The two were under administrative detention.
In a separate case on Sunday, another driver surnamed Diao presented an edited fake nucleic acid report at a highway checkpoint entering Beijing.
Beijing authorities revealed on Wednesday another case where two men organized 53 residents from Changping district to have a one-day bus tour to neighboring Hebei Province on October 19. The organizer and the bus driver did not check health codes and register information of the 53 tourists. On October 22, one of the 53 tourists who had a travel history to high-risk areas tested positive for COVID-19.
