BEIJING (CHINA) – Several flights to and from Beijing were cancelled, schools shut and some neighbourhoods sealed off as officials stepped up efforts to contain a coronavirus outbreak.
The resurgence of the disease in Beijing over the past six days has upset daily life for many with some fearing that the city is again headed for a lockdown as the number of new COVID-19 cases mounts.
Health officials confirmed 31 new infections on June 16, bringing the cumulative tally since Thursday to 137 cases, the worst resurgence in the capital city since early February.
Roads and highways in the city remained open and the factories were told to operate. Officials stepped up measures to control movement around and to and from the city on Wednesday.
Aviation data tracker Variflight showed about 60% of scheduled flights to and from Beijing Capital International Airport have been or will likely be cancelled as of Wednesday afternoon.
At the city’s other major airport, Daxing, around 70% of incoming and outbound flights were cancelled or likely to be cancelled. Most of them are domestic services.
State media said that rail officials were granting full refunds on all tickets to and from Beijing in a bid to discourage people from travelling although services haven’t been stopped.
All outbound taxi and car-hailing services and some long-distance bus services were cancelled on Tuesday, when officials put the city back on a level two alert, the second-highest level in a four-tier COVID-19 emergency response system.
As many as 27 neighbourhoods were designated as medium-risk areas. One area near the massive wholesale food centre detected as the source of the outbreak was marked as high-risk and residents were quarantined.
Kindergartens, primary schools and high schools across Beijing were shut, while some restaurants, bars and night clubs also closed.
Some residents worried that Beijing was moving closer to a full lockdown, echoing the strict bans on movement earlier this year in the city of Wuhan, where the new coronavirus was first detected at a seafood market in December.
“What I’m worried about is whether there will be a level one response like it was before, making it impossible for people to work,” said a 23-year-old media worker surnamed Wang.
The Beijing outbreak has been traced to the Xinfadi wholesale food centre in the southwest of the city. Xinfadi is much larger than the Wuhan seafood market, from where the virus spread around the world, infecting more than 8 million people.
CONTAGION FEARS
Outside of Beijing, Hebei, Liaoning, Sichuan and Zhejiang provinces have reported new cases with links to Xinfadi.
Some provinces imposed quarantine on visitors from Beijing, including Heilongjiang, which only recently succeeded in bringing a local outbreak under control.
Authorities in Macau also demanded visitors from Beijing undergo a 14-day quarantine.
In Beijing, police guarded roadblocks at compounds near Xinfandi while delivery staff on bikes and in vans queued to hand over food and other supplies.
“When they shut the market, it was a surprise,” said Wei, 32, who came with her boyfriend to deliver supplies to her mother who stayed in a compound where a case was confirmed.
“Many people heard and left the compounds, but my mother is old and cannot leave easily. Today, we brought her some vegetables and medicine.”
Some residents said they were cancelling travel plans for the three-day Dragonboat Festival at the end of June.
(Photos syndicated via Reuters)
This story has been edited by BH staff and is published from a syndicated field