Covid outbreak again in Beijing; China cancels over 1,200 flights

Beijing: A second wave of Covid-19 attack was reported from a food market in Beijing on Tuesday. 31 new cases were reported on that day and rose to 137 cases on the subsequent day. From the latest report, China has closed all the schools in Beijing and more than 1200 flights were also cancelled from and around Beijing. The authorities are trying hard to contain the outbreak expected to have occurred from Xinfadi wholesale food market.

The officials urged the residents not to leave the town as China has still not been recovered fully from the first outbreak of Covid-19 from Wuhan flesh market in the last days of 2019.tens of thousands of people linked to the Bejing cluster are undergoing testing. Almost 30 big residential buildings are sealed and contained. At least 1,255 airplanes were cancelled on Wednesday morning, which constitute nearly 75 percent of Beijing’s airport traffic.

The authorities have issued a travel-ban for all the citizens in Beijing in medium and high risk category while mandating other residents to take nucleic acid test if they wanted to leave Beijing. All other provinces have started quarantining people from Beijing. Many schools which were just re-opened after the first attack has closed, mostly are back to online classes from yesterday.

“The epidemic situation in the capital is extremely severe”, Beijing city spokesman Xu Hejian said on Tuesday. Officials have closed 11 markets and disinfected thousands of food and beverage businesses in Beijing after the outbreak was detected. An additional two domestic cases, one in neighboring Hebei province and another in Zhejiang, were reported by national authorities on Wednesday, while there were 11 imported cases.

The officials have banned gatherings, sports and functions while wearing of masks has been made strict. Unnecessary inter-provincial journeys would not be allowed. Officials said that since May 30, more than 200,000 people had visited Xinfadi market, which supplies more than 70 percent of Beijing’s fruit and vegetables. More than 8,000 workers there were tested and quarantined. Until the new outbreak, most of China’s recent cases were nationals returning from abroad as Covid-19 spread globally, and the government had all but declared victory against the disease. China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday that the virus type found in the Beijing outbreak was a “major epidemic strain” in Europe.

The first outbreak of Covid-19 was the first of its kind in the world. It started from Wuhan flesh market on December 31^st with a lady employee at the Wuhan market. From that outbreak, which was unprecedented, about 83,000 cases were confirmed resulting in around 4,000 deaths and counting. While the entire world is traumatized by the devastating infection, a second outbreak in China gives serious alarms to the world.