Beijing authorities have warned that a sharp rise in Covid-19 cases involving a 24-hour bar was critical and that the city of 22 million people was in a “race against time” to deal with it. more serious outbreak since the pandemic. it began.
The eruption means millions of people are facing mandatory tests and thousands are under specific blockades, just days after the city began erecting widespread sidewalks aimed at dealing with a wider outbreak since late April.
Authorities announced at the weekend a “ferocious” outbreak of Covid related to the Heaven supermarket bar, which had just reopened after last week’s coronavirus restrictions were eased.
The outbreak of at least 287 cases has raised new concerns about the prospects of the world’s second largest economy. China has just recovered from a two-month confinement in the city of Shanghai that had raised concerns about global supply chains.
“We should do everything, run against the clock,” He Lijian, a spokesman for the Beijing municipal government, told a news conference, referring to efforts to contain the outbreak.
Most establishments in Beijing resumed dinner and drinking only on June 6, after more than a month of measures such as only takeaway and work from home, along with the closure of shopping malls and stretches. of the transport system.
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Authorities have refrained from restoring stricter restrictions than before, but some 10,000 close contacts of bar customers have been identified and their residential buildings have been blocked.
Chaoyang, the city’s largest bar district, kicked off a three-day mass testing campaign on Monday for its estimated 3.5 million residents.
People infected in the latest increase in cases live or work in 14 of the 16 districts of the capital, according to authorities.
Police have launched a criminal investigation into the man in charge of the bar on suspicion of interference in the prevention of epidemics, Pan Xuhong, deputy director of the city’s public security office, told a news conference.
Pan said three more people, two of whom had visited the bar and the other a close contact with bar customers, had been criminally investigated after they insisted on leaving even though they were ordered to isolate themselves in the bar. home.
All three were later confirmed to be infected, prompting dozens of people to be quarantined in centralized facilities and more than 2,000 under other Covid measures, Pan said.
The bar’s commercial license has been revoked after officials found it failed to comply with regulations, such as checking customer temperature and Covid test results, or making sure customers were scanning a digital health code. , said the market regulator in Chaoyang.
Earlier in the day, the state-backed Beijing Daily said a team of officers would work to investigate and treat the Heaven supermarket bar “quickly, strictly and seriously.”
All bars, nightclubs, karaoke bars, cybercafes and other entertainment venues in the city were being inspected, the newspaper said, and those in underground spaces were being closed as epidemic prevention work intensified.
The document has repeatedly pointed the finger at an individual, called patient no. 1991, to start the attack. Neglected behavior had turned the unidentified person into the “propagator” of the outbreak.
Authorities in Beijing said the person did not take the Covid test between May 26 and June 8, despite visiting several restaurants, bars and crowded places at the time. The patient developed a fever on the afternoon of June 8, two days after a visit to the Heaven supermarket.
But despite the fever, the person returned to the bar early on June 9, the same day that a handful of other bar customers were found to be infected.