China Faces Balancing Act as Beijing Outbreak Grows to 130
Beijing Faces Balancing Act as Capital’s Outbreak Grows to 130
(Bloomberg) -- China is ramping up containment measures in Beijing as it grapples with stemming a growing outbreak that’s now topped 130 cases without sealing off its most important city.
Beijing reported 31 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, according to the local health commission, taking the total number of infections in the outbreak to 137. Cases linked to the cluster have already spread as far as Zhejiang province in China’s southeast.
All schools are closed from Wednesday and residential compounds are implementing temperature checks and mandatory registration of people entering and leaving. Those who had contact with the Xinfadi fruit and vegetable market, where the outbreak originated, are banned from leaving the city limits, while Beijing residents who want to travel out must test negative for the virus.
“The latest outbreak is still on the rise and we can’t rule out that the number of infected cases will continue to grow for a period of time,” said Pang Xinghuo, deputy head of Beijing’s Center for Disease Prevention and Control at a briefing on Wednesday.
How the coronavirus re-emerged in Beijing after a lull of nearly two months is still a mystery, underscoring the difficulty of stamping out the pathogen even in countries with broad authoritarian powers. A new wave of cases in Japan and the re-emergence of infections in New Zealand after a period of being virus-free have also added to fears that the pandemic is not ebbing in the Asian countries where it first cut its deadly swathe.
Despite the growing severity of restrictions, China’s reaction to the new cluster has been measured in contrast to previous resurgences in Wuhan and its northeast region, reflecting the balancing act faced by officials in the country’s political and culture center of more than 20 million people. Transport links have not been cut off, although local media reported that nearly 70% of schedule flights out of Beijing’s airport on Wednesday were canceled.
It is likely that the new cluster had already spread widely before the first case was detected. The Xinfadi market where it originated supplies 80% of the city’s farm produce and is frequented by thousands of people daily, some of whom procure produce in bulk and fan out to other markets across the city for resale.
“The outbreak in Beijing likely didn’t emerge just at the beginning of June or end of May. The virus was out there a month before that,” said Gao Fu, head of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, at a government meeting in Shanghai on Tuesday.
“The coronavirus tends to survive in dark, humid and polluted environments. The virus incubated and was suddenly exposed to a big population after a certain period of time,” he said.
Domestic air travel had resumed in China prior to the new outbreak, increasing the likelihood that cases linked to Beijing’s cluster have already been seeded nationwide.
“This is the danger of an outbreak in any major capital city - it is a nexus for travel,” said Nicholas Thomas, associate professor specializing in public health at the City University of Hong Kong. “It will be a very complicated exercise to contact trace every person along these corridors that infected people may have come into contact with.”
Salmon is being boycotted in China after the virus was traced back to the chopping board of a vendor selling the imported seafood. Chinese customs authorities are testing some food imports before allowing them in the country, but scientists say that there’s no evidence that food can transmit the pathogen.
Beijing has expanded mass testing among its residents, covering all who have been to or had close contact with key food markets which have been shut down. Health workers have tested some 356,000 people since June 13, said Zhang Qiang, deputy head of Beijing’s epidemic control team, at the Wednesday briefing.
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With assistance from Bloomberg