Beijing coronavirus cases to see 'cliff-like' drop this week
Staff work in a COVID-19 testing laboratory, which went into trial operation on Monday, at a sports venue in Beijing’s Daxing District. The lab built with an air-inflated structure is to address rising demand for nucleic acid tests in the city after a cluster of infections was confirmed recently. The mobile Huoyan (Fire Eye) lab was built in two days and boasts 14 automated COVID-19 testing machines.
Beijing will see a “cliff-like” drop in new cases in the recent outbreak of the novel coronavirus by the end of this week with efforts to cut chains of transmission underway, a disease control expert has said.
The city of more than 20 million people reported its first case of a new spike in COVID-19 infections on June 11, linked to the sprawling Xinfadi wholesale food market.
In all, 236 people have been infected in the worst outbreak in Beijing since the COVID-19 was identified at a seafood market in Wuhan City in Hubei Province late last year.
Beijing reported on Monday that nine new cases had been confirmed the previous day, sharply down from 22 a day earlier. The nine new cases were reported from four districts: five from Fengtai, two from Haidian and one each from Xicheng and Chaoyang.
“If you control the source and cut the chain of transmission, the number will have a ‘cliff-like’ drop,” Wu Hao, a disease control expert from the National Health Commission, told state television in an interview aired late on Sunday.
Wu said Beijing was not headed for a “flood-like” lockdown, unlike early efforts in Wuhan when little was known about the virus, adding that lockdown tactics were more targeted this time.
However, the epidemic situation in the capital remains grim and complex despite positive trend in COVID-19 containment, Xu Hejian, spokesperson for the city government, said on Monday.
As of Monday, Beijing had designated four neighborhoods as high-risk and 39 as medium-risk, to control the spread of the virus. People can leave and enter the medium-risk neighborhoods, with temperature checks and registration, but high-risk communities are totally locked down.
To identify carriers, Beijing has been conducting tests on people deemed in higher-risk groups such as restaurant workers and food and parcel couriers.
Residents in some low-risk neighborhoods have also been tested. As of Saturday, about 2.3 million Beijing residents had been sampled for nucleic acid tests.
Authorities said they had launched a blanket search and testing campaign at the city’s construction sites, where three confirmed COVID-19 cases emerged.
The Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development said on Monday the three cases were reported from two construction sites.
The commission said it had inspected 435 projects in the city and given nucleic acid tests to 1,622 people there who had visited or contacted people from the Xinfadi food market.
The two construction sites have been put under closed-off management.
Meanwhile, Hebei Province that surrounds Beijing reported two new confirmed domestically transmitted COVID-19 cases on Sunday, the provincial health commission said on Monday.
The two cases were close contacts of previously confirmed Hebei infections that were related to cases in Beijing.
Though people are concerned, most are resigned to the need to be on guard for some time.
“We’ve to live with the virus for the long term before a vaccine is available,” said Bill Yuan, 28, an IT worker.
“There might be a few new infections all the time. If it happens, we’ve to stay alert for a while and quarantine. Then go back to work when it’s gone.”
