(Bloomberg) — Beijing warned of more Covid-19 cases in the days ahead after adding 15 new infections as of 4 p.m. Saturday in the Chinese capital.
Total cases reached 20 in the last two days, with local authorities vowing to do further testing to prevent the virus’s spread, the city’s health authorities said at a briefing on Saturday.
“It’s been silently spreading for a week,” said Pang Xingu, an official with the city’s health agency. “More cases are expected to be found as we’ll conduct more testing.”
The local government said it would shut a school for a week and roll out testing for students and workers there after a total of 10 students from a middle school tested positive for Covid-19 on Friday.
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“The Covid outbreak is complex and stealthy and we are facing new challenges,” city government spokesman Xu Hejian said at the briefing late Friday. “The new infections we reported today keep us on high alert and allow no relaxation nor negligence.”
The other cases are in two separate infection chains – with two positive cases connected to a tour group and another two linked to a home decorator. As a result, tighter Covid-19 testing requirements have been imposed for workers in those sectors.
‘Urgent and Serious’
Beijing’s Covid-19 situation is “urgent and serious” following the detection of several clusters in recent days, Cai Qi, the city’s Communist Party chief said in a statement published by the municipal government’s official WeChat account at the same time as the briefing. Such clusters create a “high risk of subsequent and covert spread,” according to the statement.
The Chinese capital, with nearly 22 million residents, has been reporting small coronavirus flareups following the end of the Winter Olympics and the Paralympics around mid March, though daily infections have never exceeded a dozen.
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Meanwhile, financial hub Shanghai is still dealing with the nation’s worst outbreak in two years. Nationwide, daily infections have started to moderate from more than 29,000 a week ago.
(Updates with the latest case numbers and government comments in paragraphs one to three)
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