Chinese authorities were reimposing some travel restrictions in the capital Tuesday as they worked to contain a new coronavirus outbreak and prevent it from spreading more widely in a country that previously appeared to have largely contained the virus.
As reopenings from Europe to Latin America continued, the resurgence in China highlighted expert calls for vigilance in the fight against the pandemic, Mail reported.
China reported 40 more coronavirus infections on Tuesday, 27 of them in Beijing, bringing the city´s total to 106 since Friday. At least one patient was in critical condition and two were in serious condition.
Meanwhile, deputy director of the pathogen biology department at Wuhan University – Yang Zhanqiu – told state media that he believed the latest outbreak in Beijing involved a more infectious strain of the virus than the one which hit Wuhan at the start of the pandemic.
The country’s Vice Premier Sun Chunlan urged the city’s officials to impose ‘the strictest’ virus control measures to contain the spread of the virus, which has been linked to a massive food wholesale market called Xinfadi.
Virologist Yang believes that the new strain could be more infectious based on the high number of new cases in a short period of time, according to China’s state-run global times.
The Times reported that Yang believed that if the virus spreading in Beijing ‘matches the type of virus sampled in the Xinfadi market and from Europe’, then it was likely that it had been ‘imported’ into China by food or people from Europe.
Yang did warn that new strains of the virus make finding a vaccination more challenging, explaining: ‘No doubt different genotypes of the virus can cause the vaccine to be less effective, or even ineffective.
‘That means the vaccine would have to be effective against both viruses circulating in China and those in Europe, adding difficulty to developing a vaccine,’ he said.
Authorities have been testing market workers, anyone who visited the market in the past two weeks and anyone who came into contact with either group.
The Chinese capital, with a population of 21.5million, has locked down at least 11 neighbourhoods close to Xinfadi, with some areas being fenced off, and launched a mass-testing programme to screen all 46,000 people who have visited the market or live nearby.
On Saturday, the Fengtai district, where the market is based, announced a ‘wartime mechanism’ and will establish a command centre from which to manage the spread of the new outbreak.
Fresh meat and seafood in the city and elsewhere in China was also being inspected on the unlikely chance that was how the virus spread.
Residential communities around the market have been put under lockdown, along with the area around a second market, where three cases were confirmed. In all, 90,000 people are affected in the two neighbourhoods in the city of 20 million.
Authorities are also barring residents of areas considered at high risk from leaving Beijing and those from such areas who have already left must report to local health bureaus as soon as possible.
Monday also saw the closure of all indoor sport and entertainment venues in Beijing, and players and coaches from the Beijing Super League football team were all tested and given the week off as their training camp is in the same area of the city as the outbreak.
‘The epidemic situation in the capital is extremely severe,’ Beijing spokesman Xu Hejian warned at a press conference. ‘Right now we have to take strict measures to stop the spread of Covid-19.’
Taxis and car-hailing services have been banned from taking people out of the city and the number of passengers on buses, trains and subways will also be limited and all are required to wear masks.
China had relaxed many of its coronavirus controls after the ruling Communist Party in March declared victory over the virus, which was first detected the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.
In response to the new outbreak, Beijing suspended Monday’s planned restart of some primary schools and reversed the relaxation of some social isolation measures.
Several districts in Beijing reinstated security checkpoints, ordered residents be tested and closed schools on Monday in response to the unexpected resurgence of COVID-19.
The city reported 36 new domestic cases yesterday, all of which were linked to the Xinfadi trading hub.
The Huaxiang area of Fengtai District, where the Xinfadi market is, has been classified as a ‘high risk’ place for COVID-19 while another 22 areas in the city are at ‘medium risk’.
The boss of the Xinfadi market on Saturday told reporters that researchers had found traces of the novel coronavirus on a chopping board used to cut imported salmon.
The market was shut in the early hours of Saturday to be disinfected. Officials said they were also rectifying relevant hygienic issues, and to the government has ordered anyone who visited the market, and for their close contacts, to isolate at home for two weeks.
A spokesperson from the Beijing Municipal Health Commission said yesterday that health workers had given nucleic acid tests to 76,499 people and 59 of them had been diagnosed with COVID-19.
Nucleic acid tests work by detecting the virus’ genetic code and can be more effective than simply detecting infection in the early stages of the virus when compared to tests that examine the body’s immune response. The latter is easier to conduct, however.
The Fengtai district along with collected 8,950 samples from people who had worked in the market, according to CNN, and so far more than 6,000 samples have been tested with zero positive results so far.
Authorities had also managed to track down and collect samples from almost 30,000 people who had visited the market in the 14 days before its closure, and so far the 12,000 tests conducted so far had come back negative.
The city’s health officials claimed that the virus was likely to have been brought into the city from Europe.
