Beijing's new cluster cases rise to 79 in 4 days, officials sacked
A medical worker collects throat swab of a resident in Beijing’s Fengtai District on Monday.
Beijing recorded 36 new domestically transmitted COVID-19 cases on Sunday, as China’s capital reinstated measures to contain a resurgence.
The cases are 25 males and 11 females, and 34 out of the 36 new cases were either directly or indirectly linked to Xinfadi wholesale market in Fengtai District, including 19 people who worked there, the municipal health commission said on Monday.
Details of another two cases are still being investigated, an official of the commission told reporters.
A municipal official also said the spread of the new mutation of the virus “has not been completely grasped,” adding the situation in the Chinese capital is still grim.
All communities in Beijing are returning to level-2 response measures in wake of the new cluster, which has 79 cases in four days across eight districts so far.
The Chinese capital reported zero local transmissions for 56 days before June 11, when the first case of the new cluster emerged.
None of Beijing’s 16 districts has been hit by a blanket lockdown, but access to the neighborhoods of the people who were infected has been blocked as nucleic acid tests are being administered to residents.
The 11 neighborhoods around Xinfadi and 10 others near Yuquandong market in Haidian District have also been sealed as 90,000 residents undergo tests.
Confirmed cases have been reported among Yuquandong market staff after they visited Xinfadi market or came into contact of those who have been there.
Officials said about 200,000 people had visited the Xinfadi market since May 30, and they were trying to trace and test all of them, including going door-to-door.
Over 8,000 workers from the market have been tested and sent to centralized quarantine facilities.
Beijing on Sunday conducted nucleic acid tests on 76,499 people, with 59 testing positive. As of 6am Monday, 193 sampling sites had been set up across the city to facilitate nucleic acid testings, said Gao Xiaojun, spokesperson for the municipal health commission.
Two officials in Beijing have been sacked after the new cases. Zhou Yuqing, deputy head of the Fengtai District government, and Wang Hua, Party secretary of Huaxiang Township in Fengtai, were removed from their posts for misconduct in office during epidemic prevention and control.
Authorities also ordered the removal of Zhang Yuelin from the post of general manager of the Xinfadi market.
The neighboring Hebei Province also registered three domestically transmitted COVID-19 cases, which local authorities confirmed were all related to Beijing’s cases.
The southwest Sichuan Province reported a new suspected case of the novel coronavirus that is also linked to a case in Beijing.
The World Health Organization said it was informed of the outbreak. “WHO understands that genetic sequences will be released as soon as possible once further laboratory analyses are completed,” it said.
An epidemiologist with the Beijing government said on Sunday a DNA sequencing of the virus showed the Xinfadi outbreak could have come from Europe, though it wasn’t clear if it was being spread by the movement of people or transportation of food.
