Beijing, Apr 26 (PTI) Authorities in the Chinese capital have rolled out mass Covid testing for nearly 21 million residents in most of the city, as they race to contain a fresh outbreak of the Omicron variant in Beijing that has sparked panic buying amid fears of a Shanghai-style lockdown.
After testing over 3.5 million on Monday, Beijing reported 21 positive cases Monday, taking the total number of cases during the last few days to 155.
Gene sequencing of 38 infected samples conducted by the Beijing municipal disease prevention and control centre found that the virus is a COVID-19 Omicron variant, Pang Xinghuo, deputy head of the centre, said.
“The newly infected cases had an epidemiological association with the early infected ones. Results of epidemiology, gene sequencing, and antibody detection showed there are currently two transmission chains in Beijing,” Pang said.
One neighbourhood in Beijing was on Tuesday classified as a high-risk area for COVID-19, and seven others as medium-risk areas, as more locally transmitted confirmed COVID-19 cases were reported.
The latest classifications bring the total number of high-risk areas in Beijing to two and medium-risk areas to 12, local epidemic prevention and control work officials told the media on Tuesday.
Officials also assured stable supplies of vegetables and other food stocks as people continued to resort to panic buying fearing a lockdown similar to Shanghai which completes the 4th week on Tuesday.
Though cases showed a downward trend in the city of about 26 million, Shanghai’s death toll continues to rise as 52 more people died on Monday taking the death toll to 190.
Officials attribute the high death toll to a large old population in the city.
Positive signs flicker in Shanghai with the sharpest case drop recorded since the latest outbreak, and only a small proportion of cases found outside the quarantined areas, officials said.
Yet municipal officials, believing it is far from time to let their guard down, kicked off another round of mass testing and doubled down on restrictions on leaving Shanghai, to prevent the infection from spilling over, state-run Global Times reported.
Shanghai, China’s business hub has recorded total infections exceeding 500,000 since the tail end of February, officials said.
Zhao Dandan, a deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission told the media on Tuesday that the curve of the outbreak has been flattened and is dropping, yet it is far from time for the city to let its guard down.
Zhao said that Shanghai is strictly sticking to the policy of “not leaving Shanghai unless unnecessary” to prevent the infection from spilling over to other places.
Zhang Boli, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said people aged over 60 accounted for 30 per cent of the confirmed cases in Shanghai.
Most of the elderly suffer from underlying diseases, including hypertension, diabetes, coronary heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, and uremia.
“A combination of these problems and COVID-19 can lead to severe, rapidly-progressing disease that can easily turn into severe and critical illness,” he said.