Dec 28, 2020 01:48 PM

Beijing Warns of Potential Covid Resurgence With New Locally Transmitted Cases

A Beijing residential compound is cleaned on June 17.

Beijing’s fight against the Covid-19 pandemic may not end anytime soon.

Officials in the Chinese capital have warned the public to be on high alert for Covid-19 flare-ups as several districts report new infections, including one of an employee at a U.S. tech giant.

“We must be soberly aware that there have been sporadic cases in multiple places in the capital and that prevention and control (of the epidemic) is facing a major test,” Beijing government spokesperson Xu Hejian said (link in Chinese) Friday at a press briefing. People must pay high attention to epidemic prevention and control “at all times,” he said.

The warning comes as several districts in Beijing, including Shunyi and Chaoyang, home to a large swath of the city’s expatriate community, have reported multiple imported and locally transmitted Covid-19 cases. That has added to concerns about the potential for a major resurgence during the traditional wintertime flu season when viruses thrive.

The latest locally transmitted Covid-19 cases include an employee at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (China) Co. Ltd. (HPE China), a subsidiary of New York-listed software giant Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. On Friday, Christmas Day, the 29-year-old Chinese female employee was confirmed to have the virus after showing symptoms of a fever and coughing, according to an official release (link in Chinese).

The Shunyi district, where the employee lives, has imposed “wartime” disease control measures, a local official said (link in Chinese) Saturday at a press conference.

Meanwhile, authorities in the Chaoyang district have disinfected all offices and other public spaces in Lei Shing Hong Center, where HPE China is located, as the employee’s laptop tested positive for the virus, according to a Saturday government statement (link in Chinese). Nucleic acid tests have also been conducted on nearly 3,000 people in the office building, all returning negative results.

In addition, an employee with South Korea’s Asiana Airlines Inc. working in Beijing tested positive after returning to South Korea on Tuesday, a Beijing official said at the Friday briefing. The employee was later confirmed to be an asymptomatic carrier. Close contacts of the case have been traced, and disinfection has been conducted at Jiacheng Plaza and the Kempinski Apartments in the Chaoyang district, where the person works and lives, the official said.

Nationwide, the situation is similar, with many other cities including Shanghai and the northeastern port city of Dalian also reporting locally transmitted cases lately.

To prevent and control Covid-19 during the upcoming New Year and Chinese Lunar New Year holidays, Beijing officials have repeatedly called for city residents not to leave the city or Chinese mainland unless absolutely necessary.

It has been one year since the first known case of Covid-19 was detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. Globally, the novel coronavirus has raged throughout the year, surging in recent weeks with the onset of winter in the northern hemisphere. To date it has infected about 80 million people and claimed more than 1.7 million lives.

Currently, people around the globe are hopeful as positive results from late-stage clinical trials and emergency government authorizations suggest vaccines that could end the pandemic are within reach, although massive challenges still lie ahead.

“Next year will be crunch time for getting Covid-19 under control as countries around the world will be pushing vaccination,” said Zhang Wenhong, a top Chinese infectious disease expert.

Contact reporter Lin Jinbing (jinbinglin@caixin.com) and editor Yang Ge (geyang@caixin.com)

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