Officials pledge sufficient supplies of necessities Beijing district tests 3.5m as COVID surge expands
Beijing’s Chaoyang district, home to some 3.5 million residents, rolled out three rounds of mass nucleic acid testing starting from Monday after the district registered the most COVID- 19 cases in the capital’s latest epidemic surge.
The test applies to those who are living and working in the district, which will be conducted respectively on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, the Chaoyang disease prevention and control leading team said on Sunday.
Chaoyang reported 11 new COVID- 19 infections from Saturday afternoon to Sunday afternoon, taking the total tally within the district since Friday to 26. Among the positive cases were students, teachers and relatives of a middle school. A total of 1,230 people were labeled as close contacts and quarantined.
Two residential communities in Chaoyang district on Sunday were respectively labeled as a high- risk and medium- risk region for COVID- 19.
Health experts believed that Beijing has already taken effective and strong measures to prevent the situation from getting worse, and the results of the mass nucleic acid testing will be an index for the capital city to decide whether to take further antiepidemic measures such as locking down some areas.
Residents in Chaoyang are urged to take a test before going to work on Monday and reduce their social activities as much as possible. “The expanded testing is to contain and cut off surging infections, and protect the health and lives of residents,” the local anti- epidemic team said.
Amid the virus surge, some areas in Chaoyang with the presence of COVID- 19 cases saw panic shopping, and several markets suffered a temporary shortage of fresh vegetables on Sunday afternoon, local media reported.
To ease the situation, Beijing’s fresh food e- commerce companies immediately activated emergency response mechanisms to allocate and increase the supply of groceries including meat, poultry, eggs, milk, fresh fruits and vegetables.
The Beijing Municipal Commercial Affairs Bureau also stressed at the press conference on Sunday that supplies of daily necessities are sufficient in Beijing and traffic links to goods supplies are operating normally.
At around 8 pm, in a visit to a large supermarket in the Taiyanggong neighborhood in Chaoyang, a Global Times reporter found that all the trolleys at the entrance of the supermarket were in use. The fresh food and vegetable section had the largest number of shoppers, with dozens of people lining up to buy vegetables.
Experts viewed the response by Beijing’s public as one of drawing lessons from the Shanghai outbreak, where residents suffered shortages of food in the fight against the coronavirus.
A senior expert from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said that drawing lessons from the Shanghai outbreak and flare- ups in other provinces, Beijing should be able to deal with the COVID- 19 resurgence more effectively.