Por Andrew Galbraith
SHANGHAIJun 11 – The Chinese capital, Beijing, is experiencing an “explosive” outbreak of COVID-19 linked to a bar, a government spokesman said on Saturday, as its main shopping mall, Shanghai, carried out massive tests to contain a jump in cases linked to a barber shop.
The warning came after a further tightening of measures against COVID in Beijing since Thursday, with some entertainment venues in at least two districts closed after an outbreak in a neighborhood packed with nightlife, shops and embassies.
Although China’s infection rate is low compared to world standards, it maintains a zero policy COVIDciting the need to protect the elderly and the medical system, while other countries try to live with the virus.
So far, the country of 1.4 billion people has only suffered 5,226 deaths from COVID-19.
Beijing authorities said on Saturday that the 61 new cases discovered in the city on Friday had visited or had links to the Heaven supermarket bar.
“The recent outbreak … is highly explosive in nature and wide-ranging,” Xu Hejian, a spokesman for the Beijing municipal government, told a news conference.
The capital had registered 46 new local cases on Saturday as of 3:00 p.m. (07:00 GMT), all of them people already isolated or under observation, said health official Liu Xiaofeng.
The city did not announce new restrictions at the briefing, but Beijing’s sports administration later said all sports activities for teenagers would be canceled from Sunday.
So far, 115 cases and 6,158 close contacts related to the bar have been recorded, throwing the city of 22 million into a state of anxiety. Less than two weeks ago, Beijing relaxed restrictions imposed to fight a major outbreak that began in April.
The extensive Universal Beijing Resort a theme park on the outskirts of the city canceled its reopening plan on Friday. Local authorities said that three of his workers had visited the Heaven supermarket bar.
Many neighborhoods in the capital have been put on lockdown and residents have been asked to stay home.
TESTS IN ALL THE CIUDAD
In Shanghai, authorities on Saturday announced three new local confirmed cases and one asymptomatic case detected outside of quarantined areas, as nearly all of the city’s 25 million residents began a new round of testing for coronavirus. COVID.
The authorities ordered the testing of PCR to residents of 15 of Shanghai’s 16 districts this weekend, with five districts barring residents from leaving their homes during the testing period. A local official said residents were required to take at least one blood test. PCR a week until July 31.
The most populous city in China did not lift the exhausting two-month confinement due to the COVID-19 until June 1.
“I’m a little worried because if there are positive cases in the compound, it will go into lockdown,” said Shi Weiqi, a Shanghai resident. “I will also stock up well on some supplies in case the previous situation repeats itself.”
Shanghai authorities said they had reprimanded and fired several officials for oversights at a hotel used to quarantine people arriving from abroad and which was identified as one of the hotbeds of the wave of the omicron variant of the coronavirus.
They also said they warned or fired executives at a state-owned company that owns the Red Rose beauty salon, where three cases were detected among workers this week. Salon employees, they said, did not follow guidelines for testing for PCR daily.
On Saturday, Shanghai reported seven new local symptomatic cases for the previous day, an increase of one, of which six were detected outside of quarantined areas. The city also recorded nine local asymptomatic cases, up from six the day before.
In total, mainland China recorded 210 new coronavirus cases on June 10, of which 79 were symptomatic and 131 asymptomatic, according to the National Health Commission. That figure is higher than the 151 new cases the day before, 45 of them symptomatic and 106 asymptomatic.
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