The Beijing Municipal Health Commission reported 27 new Covid-19 cases on Tuesday – bringing the total of five days to 106 following an increase in Xinfadi, the largest wholesale food market in the city.
A large and lively market in the southwest Fengtai district of Beijing occupies 277 hectares and has more than 2,000 stalls, mainly selling fruit and vegetables as well as meat and seafood. It supplies about 70% of city vegetables and 10% of pork, according to officials.
The market has been closed since Saturday, but its thin size and the number of people working or visiting there from inside and outside Beijing have increased the risk of spreading the outbreak.
Through door-to-door visits and calls, authorities have tracked nearly 200,000 people who had gone to the market for two weeks before closing. They have been ordered to stay at home for medical observations and are being tested for coronavirus, a city official said at a press conference on Monday.
Locked housing
Two other Beijing food markets have been closed due to confirmed cases related to Xinfadi, which caused tight housing locking around them.
On Tuesday, Xicheng district – neighboring Fengtai – announced that seven residential communities around the Tiantao Honglian market would be locked following the discovery of a corona virus case on Sunday.
This follows a similar lock on the housing complex near Xinfadi and the Yuquandong market in the Haidian district. In total, 29 residential communities have been locked up throughout the city.
Housing lockdown measures are similar to those enacted previously in Wuhan city, the center of the spread of the corona virus outbreak.
Wang Du, who lives in one of the confined communities near the Yuquandong market, said residents cannot leave the complex to buy groceries, and must order food online or buy from trucks that come to the complex once a day with fresh potatoes, vegetables and eggs.
He said all residents in his community carried out a nucleic acid test for the corona virus yesterday.
“To be honest, I’m not too worried,” he said. “I think we have a lot of experience in detention, and we can react very quickly (to new outbreaks).”
As of Tuesday morning, 276 agricultural markets and 33,173 restaurants throughout the city had also been disinfected, officials said.
Outbound trips are limited
The outbreak has also spread beyond Beijing, with the nearby provinces of Liaoning and Hubei reporting a total of eight cases of the corona virus associated with the capital group.
On Tuesday, the country’s southwestern Sichuan province also reported a confirmed case – a woman returning from Beijing on June 9. She was infected while visiting her husband, who works at the Xinfadi market.
Unlike Wuhan, the center of China’s original distribution, Beijing has not yet fully decided on a trip. But taxi out and call-car services, and several long-distance bus routes between Beijing and neighboring provinces have been suspended, according to the government
Beijing Daily.
The city government has also banned high-risk groups, such as close contact from confirmed cases, from leaving the city, officials said on Monday.
On Tuesday, Shanghai
was announced that travelers from areas with moderate-high coronavirus risks will be asked to be quarantined for 14 days. Beijing has one environment that is designated as high risk and 22 as medium risk on Monday.
Steven Jiang and Shawn Deng from CNN contributed to the reporting.