Beijing extends movement curbs to contain resurgent coronavirus

[snoop1130]

Beijing extends movement curbs to contain resurgent coronavirus

By Stella Qiu and Cate Cadell

 

A traveler wearing protective gear walks with luggage at the departure hall of Beijing Capital International Airport after scores of domestic flights in and out of the Chinese capital were cancelled following the new outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Beijing, China June 17, 2020. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

 

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's capital cancelled scores of flights, shut schools and blocked off some neighbourhoods as it ramped up efforts to contain a coronavirus outbreak that has fanned fears of wider contagion.

 

Many in Beijing have had their daily lives upended by the resurgence of the disease over the past six days, with some fearing the entire city is headed for a lockdown as the number of new cases mounts.

 

Health officials reported 31 new infections for June 16, taking cumulative cases since Thursday to 137 in the city's worst resurgence in four months, with 356,000 people tested since Sunday.

 

The Xinfadi market to which the new outbreak has been traced was the capital's largest trading centre for farm produce, with high levels of product traffic and clusters of people, said Pang Xinghuo, a senior disease control official.

 

"The risk of the outbreak spreading is huge and controlling it is difficult," she told a news conference. "(We) can't rule out the possibility the number of cases will persist for a period of time."

 

Although roads and highways in Beijing were still open and companies and factories had not been told to halt work, authorities stepped up movement control measures on Wednesday.

 

About 60% of scheduled flights at the Beijing Capital International Airport had been cancelled or were likely to be by 1000 GMT, aviation data tracker Variflight showed, as were about half the flights at Daxing, the city's other major airport.

 

Most of the affected flights were domestic.

 

State media said train passengers also got ticket refunds, an apparent bid to discourage travel, even though services have not been officially cancelled.

 

All outbound taxi and car-hailing services and some long-distance bus routes were cancelled on Tuesday, when officials put the city back on a level two alert, the second-highest in a four-tier virus emergency response system.

 

That reversed a downgrade to level two from level three just 10 days earlier.

 

About 27 neighbourhoods were designated medium-risk areas, with entrants undergoing temperature checks and registration. An area near the massive wholesale food centre where the outbreak began was marked high-risk, and its residents were quarantined.

 

Kindergartens, primary schools and high schools shut across across Beijing, as did some bars, restaurants and night clubs.

 

"What I'm worried about is whether there will be a level one response like it was before, making it impossible for people to work," said a 23-year-old media worker surnamed Wang.

 

China imposed strict bans on movement this year in the central city of Wuhan, where the virus was first detected at a seafood market in December, before spreading worldwide to infect more than 8 million people.

 

Beijing's Xinfadi wholesale food centre is far larger than the Wuhan market, however.

 

CONTAGION FEARS

 

Outside Beijing, the provinces of Hebei, Liaoning, Sichuan and Zhejiang have reported new cases linked to Xinfadi.

 

Many provinces worried about contagion have imposed quarantine requirements on visitors from Beijing, as well as Macau.

 

In Beijing, police guarded roadblocks at compounds near Xinfadi while delivery staff on bikes and in vans queued to hand food and other supplies to residents.

 

"When they shut the market, it was a surprise," said Wei, 32, visiting with her boyfriend to deliver food and medicine to her mother, who lives in a compound where a virus case was confirmed.

 

"Many people heard and left the compounds, but my mother is old and cannot leave easily."

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2020-06-17

 

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[petermik]

ooh deary me...the welcome to Thailand at the end of the month seems likely to be put on hold now.

[smedly]

seems they are at it again, filthy dirty animal markets spreading disease

[ukrules]

3 hours ago, petermik said:

ooh deary me...the welcome to Thailand at the end of the month seems likely to be put on hold now.

Don't count on that, Beijing is just one city.

 

If the Chinese government announce that only Beijing has a problem then I would expect flights from elsewhere in China to resume on schedule.

 

They will do as they're told.

[Traubert]

3 hours ago, petermik said:

ooh deary me...the welcome to Thailand at the end of the month seems likely to be put on hold now.

From Beijing it does but I'm in China yet 1000 miles from Beijing.

 

You have to think of the scale of the country. I'm nearer Thailand than Beijing.

[yuyiinthesky]

7 hours ago, snoop1130 said:

 

"When they shut the market, it was a surprise," said Wei, 32, visiting with her boyfriend to deliver food and medicine to her mother, who lives in a compound where a virus case was confirmed.

 

"Many people heard and left the compounds, but my mother is old and cannot leave easily."

So as before in Wuhan, many left before the lockdown and carried the virus everywhere.
Making the lockdown a futile exercise, again.

But when a government needs to do “something” ...

[Darksidedude]

Shut down and torch these bloody markets, common sense really

[grumpy 4680]

       China is putting the curb's on as the virus returns,  The only curb;s the Chinese use are the Denials of the Truth.

[Isaan sailor]

Viral boomerang.

[lannarebirth]

Beijing looks to be breaking out in a huge way right now, with information being they are now dealing with the "Italian strain"of the CV.

[GinBoy2]

3 hours ago, lannarebirth said:

Beijing looks to be breaking out in a huge way right now, with information being they are now dealing with the "Italian strain"of the CV.

Thats the worrying thing about Covid-19 are the mutations. 

 

Unlike SARS which didn't mutate, and basically died out, this sucker seems to like humans and mutates to increase the number of spikes to infect us.

 

Without a vaccine or effective treatment this ain't over!

 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-infectivity/mutation-in-new-coronavirus-increases-chance-of-infection-study-idUSKBN23M1M9

[tonbridgebrit]

On 6/17/2020 at 2:48 PM, smedly said:

seems they are at it again, filthy dirty animal markets spreading disease

I think you should look at what's going on back home in Britain and America. A few hundred new cases in Beijing, and they've decided to shut down the city. But in Britain and America, new cases are greater than a few hundred, but the government is still going to remove the lockdown.

[tonbridgebrit]

On 6/18/2020 at 6:27 AM, grumpy 4680 said:

       China is putting the curb's on as the virus returns,  The only curb;s the Chinese use are the Denials of the Truth.

And you really think Boris in Britain telling the truth about the virus in Britain ?

[3NUMBAS]

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/germany-reports-highest-daily-rise-142548921.html

 

Germany reports highest daily rise in coronavirus cases in a month

Rebecca Speare-Cole

,

Evening Standard•19 June 2020

 

 

 

Getty Images

Germany has reported its highest daily increase in coronavirus cases in a month.

The country has so far managed to contain its Covid-19 outbreak better than other large nations in Europe.

But the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s disease control centre, listed 770 new cases on Friday, taking the country’s total to 188,534.

A flurry of positive tests this week from an outbreak at a slaughterhouse in the western region of Guetersloh contributed the biggest daily increase since May 20.

More than 100 residents of a high-rise apartment building in Goettingen also recently tested positive for the virus.

The outbreak comes on the heels of another flare-up in the similarly large Iduna apartment complex in the city, following celebrations to mark the end of Ramadan.

The German government has stuck to its course of gradually reopening the country while seeking to clamp down swiftly on localised outbreaks.

A free app launched on Tuesday to help trace people who may have been exposed to the virus has already been downloaded 9.6 million times in Germany, which has a population of 83 million.

Japan released a similar app on Friday, also using technology developed by Apple and Google. Officials say data will only be recorded and stored in individual users’ phones and deleted after 14 days to protect their privacy.

 

 

 

 

 

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8

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Camilla Tominey

,

The Telegraph•19 June 2020

 

 

 

 

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