Cases by patient from US put Beijing district at ‘high risk’

Beijing’s Chaoyang district has been identified as a “high-risk” COVID-19 area, with media reports saying it is now the only high-risk area in China in the official system, triggering concerns among local residents over the epidemic situation in the district as well as in the capital.

Areas that have reported more than 50 COVID-19 cases in total and discovered cluster transmissions in the last 14 days are ranked as highrisk COVID-19 areas in China, Pang Xinghuo, an official of the Beijing CDC, said at a press conference on Monday.

The move came after local authorities confirmed three new COVID-19 cases in a Chaoyang community, who are all from the same family of an imported case from the US reported on April 14, according to Pang.

The move triggered heavy concern on social media platforms amid viral reports on Monday. Chaoyang residents expressed worry over the epidemic situation in the district and how the ranking would affect their lives, and they wondered if they would be asked to undergo a 14-day quarantine if they left the district.

Some were also worried that the move indicates the high threat of imported cases to the capital in general.

According to some posts circulating online, relatives of the cases mentioned above had been to an outlet store in Chaoyang and a water park in Shunyi district before they were confirmed to be infected.

The Global Times contacted the water park in Shunyi on Monday, which said that it had not discovered transmission in the park and is operating as normal.

Despite growing imported cases and cases related to them, Beijing has not reported domestic cases for more than 25 continuous days. The capital as a whole is at a low COVID-19 risk level, according to local officials.

The capital city has lifted the 14day quarantine requirement for people coming from neighboring Hebei Province or Tianjin Municipality, if one had stayed in the two places for more than two weeks before coming to Beijing, a move easing the COVID-19 control which represents the complexity of the epidemic control work in Beijing, analysts said.

While most parts of China, including hardest-hit Wuhan, have been classified as low risk, seven locations, including Yuexiu and Baiyun districts in South China’s Guangzhou and Suifenhe in Northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, are still considered medium-risk areas due to the threat of imported cases.

Photo: cnsphoto A foreign volunteer (left), who is a student at a college in Guangzhou, South China’s Guangdong Province, talks to another foreigner who lives in the city’s Baiyun district. Five volunteers in his team helped foreigners in the community during the COVID-19 pandemic.