[ad_1]
Authorities in Beijing have warned that a sharp rise in Covid-19 cases linked to a 24-hour bar was critical and the city of 22 million people was in a “race against time” to get to grips with its most serious outbreak since the pandemic began.
The flare-up means millions of people are facing mandatory testing and thousands are under targeted lockdowns, just days after the city started to lift widespread curbs intended to tackle a broader outbreak since late April.
Authorities announced at the weekend a “ferocious” Covid outbreak linked to the Heaven Supermarket bar, which had only just reopened after coronavirus curbs were eased last week.
The outbreak of at least 287 cases has raised new concerns about the outlook for the world’s second-largest economy. China is just recovering from a two-month lockdown in the city of Shanghai that had raised concerns about global supply chains.
“We should go all out, race against time,” He Lijian, spokesperson for the Beijing municipal government, told a news conference, referring to efforts to contain the outbreak.
Drinking and dining in most establishments in Beijing only resumed on 6 June, after more than a month of measures such as takeaway meals only and working from home, along with the closure of malls and stretches of the transport system.
Allow content provided by a third party?
This article includes content hosted on theguardian.. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as the provider may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click ‘Allow and continue’.
Authorities have refrained from restoring the toughest of the earlier restrictions, but about 10,000 close contacts of the customers of the bar have been identified and their residential buildings put under lockdown.
Chaoyang, the city’s largest district in which the bar is located, began a three-day mass testing campaign on Monday for its roughly 3.5 million residents.
People infected in the latest surge in cases live or work in 14 of the capital’s 16 districts, authorities have said.
Police have launched a criminal investigation into the person in charge of the bar on suspected interference with epidemic prevention, Pan Xuhong, deputy director of the city’s public security bureau, told the news conference.
Pan said three other people, two of whom had visited the bar and the other a close contact of bar customers, had been put under criminal investigation after they insisted on going out despite being ordered to isolate at home.
The three were later confirmed to have been infected, which resulted in dozens of people being put into quarantine at centralized facilities and more than 2,000 under other Covid measures, Pan said.
The bar’s business license has been revoked after officials found it failed to comply with rules including checking customers’ temperature and Covid test results, or making sure customers scanned a digital health code, the market regulator in Chaoyang said.
Earlier in the day, the state-backed Beijing Daily said a team of officials would work to investigate and deal with the Heaven Supermarket bar “quickly, strictly and seriously”.
All of the city’s bars, nightclubs, karaoke venues, internet cafes and other places of entertainment were being inspected, the newspaper said, with those in underground spaces being shut as epidemic prevention work was tightened.
The paper has repeatedly pointed the finger at an individual, called Patient No 1,991, for starting the flareup. Careless behavior had turned the unidentified person into the “propagator” of the outbreak.
Beijing authorities said the person did not take a Covid test between 26 May 26 and 8 June, despite visiting a number of restaurants, bars and crowded places at that time.
The patient developed a fever by the evening of 8 June, two days after a visit to Heaven Supermarket.
But despite the fever, the person returned to the bar early on 9 June, the same day a handful of other bar patrons were found to be infected.
[ad_2]
Source link
