Beijing government officials cut off most transport into the city on Monday in an effort to protect China’s national capital from a nationwide surge of the Chinese coronavirus, the state-run Global Times reported.
“Inbound flights, trains, and long-distance buses from regions where new cases [of the Chinese coronavirus] have been found are suspended, including hard-hit cities like Nanjing, Zhengzhou and Zhangjiajie. Other routes coming in the capital city will also be strictly managed,” according to the newspaper.
“Anyone from a city with [Chinese coronavirus] cases identified has been banned from entering Beijing and flights, trains and long-haul buses from those places have been halted,” the South China Morning Post reported on August 2, citing statements made by local Communist Party officials at a Beijing municipal meeting on August 1.
“Beijing must be ‘guarded at all costs’ with the fastest, strictest measures and most decisive actions,” Beijing Communist Party Secretary Cai Qi said at Sunday’s meeting.
“Authorities at the meeting also decided that people already in Beijing from cities with medium- and high-risk areas will be tested and their health monitored to ‘ensure no one is missed,'” according to the Post.
“Employees of government agencies and state-owned enterprises [in Beijing] have also been banned from travelling to affected cities and agencies must not organise travel for them,” the Post further revealed. “Anyone from Beijing who is in one of these cities will not be able to return until they have completed 14 days of health monitoring and a negative coronavirus test 48 hours before boarding a flight or train.”
Beijing health authorities have additionally “issued notices, urging residents not to leave the city and [surrounding Hebei] province unless necessary,” Beijing Daily reported on August 2.
Local Communist Party officials locked down six residential communities within Beijing’s northwestern district of Haidian on Monday morning after reportedly detecting just one new case of the Chinese coronavirus in the area.
“Guoxing Community along with five others adjacent to it in Haidian will enforce a closed-cycle management, after a resident in the community tested positive for coronavirus,” Beijing News Radio reported.
Communist Party officials earlier locked down two residential compounds in Beijing’s southwestern Fangshan district on the morning of August 1 after reportedly detecting three new coronavirus cases within the same family in Fangshan.
More than 350 people across 27 Chinese cities have tested positive for the Chinese coronavirus in recent days. Chinese health officials say all new infections, including at least four in Beijing, trace back to a single cluster infection detected at the Nanjing Lukou International Airport in eastern China’s Jiangsu province on July 20.