BEIJING — The number of new coronavirus cases in a fresh outbreak in the Chinese capital of Beijing passed 100 on Tuesday, according to health officials who have rushed to impose restrictions across the densely populated city.
The latest flare-up of COVID-19 cases alarmed Chinese authorities this week, who are clamoring to stop the spread after a cluster of new cases was linked to a wholesale food market in the southwest of Beijing. The first new case was confirmed on June 11 — previously the city had gone 56 days without any new cases.
The sprawling Xinfadi market supplies Beijing with 80 percent of its food and is said to be the largest wholesale agricultural market in Asia.
Health officials said the structure of the virus detected there did not look like the strain that appeared in Beijing two months ago, with some linking it to imported salmon — possibly from Europe — after samples from cutting boards and counters from the market tested positive.
Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an interview with The People’s Daily, a state newspaper, on Monday that this was one theory being looked at, but that investigations were ongoing.
Hong Kong’s Department for Food and Environmental Hygiene said on Monday it would also take samples from wholesale and import markets as a precaution but stressed that there was no evidence that COVID-19 spread through food.
“I think we need to look at what has happened in this case. I don’t believe it is the primary hypothesis, but it needs to be explored,” Michael Ryan of the World Health Organization said on Monday, commenting on the Beijing spike.
As of Tuesday, China’s National Health Commission (NHC) reported 106 cases of coronavirus in total in Beijing, with 27 new cases reported in the city on Monday. It is the most serious flare-up in China since February, stoking fears of a second-wave of the disease, which began in the central city of Wuhan late last year.
Coronavirus has so far killed 4,634 people in China, according to the NHC, far lower numbers than in Europe and the United States.
While not in a Wuhan-style lockdown, the Chinese capital has gone into a “wartime” mode on a district level, said officials, with local neighborhoods instituting 24-hour security checkpoints and closing schools.
To contain the fresh outbreak, authorities in Beijing have suspended some transport in and out of the city and banned outbound travel for “high-risk” individuals, Beijing municipal government said on its website on Tuesday. It is not yet clear who this category of people might include but likely the elderly and close contacts of confirmed cases.
Overnight, some parts of the capital, including the city’s old-style hutong neighborhoods were walled up, with entry and exit restricted to a few round-the-clock security checkpoints.
“Beijing will take the most resolute, decisive, and strict measures to contain the outbreak,” Xu Hejian, spokesman at the Beijing city government, said at a press conference on Tuesday.
Authorities have jumped to mobilize mass testing, with tens of thousands of people already swabbed at sites set up at sport stadiums and drive-through locations across the capital. So far, the city has traced nearly 200,000 people who have visited the market since May 30, city officials said.
Shanghai, China’s financial hub, said on Tuesday that travelers from Beijing would be quarantined for 14 days on entering the city, according to Shanghai’s Health Commission.
The capital could also become a “no-go zone” for people from the rest of the country, according to reports in the state run Global Times newspaper. With holidaymakers and business people put off travel there, while locals in Beijing fear after almost half a year of lockdown measures, their vacation plans for the upcoming Dragon Boat summer festival this month, could be curtailed.
Reuters contributed to this report.
Ed Flanagan contributed.