China Covid-19 cases rise, Beijing tightens entry rules

China’s capital warned on Monday that it was facing its most severe test of the Covid-19 pandemic, shutting businesses and schools in hard-hit districts and tightening rules for entering the city as infections ticked higher in Beijing and nationally. China is fighting numerous Covid flare-ups, from Zhengzhou in Henan province to Chongqing in the southwest. It reported 26,824 new local cases on Sunday, nearing the country’s daily infection peak in April. It also recorded two deaths in Beijing, up from one on Saturday — China’s first since late May.

BEIJING: China’s capital reported two new deaths and local authorities in the southern city locked down the largest district as China on Monday grappled to control a country-wide Covid-19 outbreak that’s is resulting in record infections.

China logged 27,095 cases nationwide, inching closer to the daily highest number of infections reported during the Shanghai outbreak earlier this year, with the caseload in Beijing rising to 962, its highest since the beginning of the pandemic, and two more deaths reported for Sunday.

Guangzhou, capital of the southern economic powerhouse, Guangdong, reporting the largest number of new cases on Monday at 9,085.

266 cases of all new cases in Beijing on Sunday were identified outside quarantine zones during community tests, indicating that the virus - primarily, the Omicron BF.7 variant - is circulating within the community.

A 91-year-old woman and 88-year-old man died on Sunday, the national health commission announced on Monday, following the death of an 87-year-old man on Saturday, China’s first documented virus-related death since May 26 in Shanghai.

“The city is facing the most complex and severe prevention and control situation since the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, and is in the most critical and tight moment,” Liu Xiaofeng, deputy director of the Municipal Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said.