Beijing: First Wuhan. When Wuhan was contained, the virus transferred its gaze to the world, and China was relieved. All through the Wuhan experience, severe containment measures prevented its spread within China. But now it’s back. And it seems, with a vengeance.
Authorities in Beijing have said that Beijing was facing “explosive and concentrated outbreaks” of the coronavirus. The capital has started conducting nucleic acid tests on 90,000 people as the COVID-19 positive cases in Beijing jumped to 106, a senior city official said on Tuesday.
Twenty-seven new cases were reported in the last 22 hours, Beijing city spokesman Xu Hejian said, adding that strict measures have been implemented to stem the spread of the deadly virus. Since the outbreak at the Xinfadi wholesale market in the last five days, the total confirmed new cases have reached 106, he said.
The situation is “extremely severe” said the official. “This is our top priority. We have to strictly implement all the measures and seize every minute,” he said.
Earlier, China’s National Health Commission (NHC) reported 46 new coronavirus cases including 27 in Beijing, which is currently testing thousands of people and lockdown many residential areas following a sudden spurt of a cluster of cases from a local wholesale market.
Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist with the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, told the 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. The fact that it happened in Xinfadi, a large wholesale market, is a challenge in itself as we try to carry out epidemiological investigations,” Wu said.
After reporting zero new cases of the coronavirus infections for 56 consecutive days, Beijing reported 79 cases related to Xinfadi – a large wholesale food market – between Thursday and Sunday including one critically ill patient and two severely ill, as the official data showed, state-run Global Times reported.
“The resurgence of cases sounded the alarm to us, with Xinfadi being a large food market that supplies a large proportion of Beijing’s fresh vegetables, recording a high level of daily traffic, which is part of the reason behind such a severe situation,” Wang Peiyu, deputy head of Peking University’s School of Public Health said.
Beijing sacked two officials in Fengtai district – Zhou Yuqing, deputy head of the Fengtai district government, and Wang Hua, Party secretary of Huaxiang Township in Fengtai – for misconduct in office during epidemic prevention and control. Zhang Yuelin was also ordered to be removed from the post of general manager of the Xinfadi wholesale market, the official media reported.
The origin of this new strain of the virus is Europe says Chinese official media after Yang Peng, a researcher from Beijing CDC, told state-run CCTV that it has been preliminarily determined that the virus found on the samples from the market is related to strains China has seen from imported cases. Many Chinese who were abroad Pre-COVID are returning home.
The WHO however disagrees until they complete their investigation. “We have asked China for the genetic sequencing and to receive new data on the epidemic as the investigation unfolds; and our counterparts are committed to continuing to provide such data. WHO is following up with Chinese officials for further detail,” a WHO statement said.
