BEIJING: Dozens of people tested positive for the coronavirus in Beijing as parts of the city were locked down on Saturday after the emergence of a new cluster linked to a wholesale food market.

People were ordered to stay home at 11 residential estates in south Beijing’s Fengtai district and the nearby Xinfadi market was closed as authorities raced to contain the outbreak that has fuelled fears of resurgence in local transmission.

Most of the six new domestic infections reported on Saturday were linked to the meat and vegetable market, health officials said, which provides much of the capital’s food supply.

Official news agency Xinhua reported at least one of the cases was “severe”. But another 45 asymptomatic cases — which China counts separately — were detected after mass testing of nearly 2,000 workers at the market on Friday, city health official Pang Xinghuo later told reporters.

Another worker tested positive at a farmers’ market in the city’s northwestern district of Haidian — a close contact of one of the confirmed cases linked to Xinfadi.

Beijing’s first Covid-19 case in two months, announced on Thursday, had visited Xinfadi market and had no recent travel history outside the city.

China’s domestic outbreak had been brought largely under control through strict lockdowns that were imposed after the disease was first detected late last year.

These measures had mostly been lifted as the infection rate dropped, and the majority of recent cases were citizens living abroad who were tested as they returned home during the pandemic.

Among the six new domestic cases announced on Saturday were three Xinfadi market workers, one market visitor and two employees at the China Meat Research Centre, seven kilometres away. One of the employees had visited the market last week.

Authorities closed the market, along with another seafood market visited by one of the patients, for disinfection and sample collection on Friday.

Reporters saw hundreds of police officers, many wearing masks and gloves, and dozens of paramilitary police deployed at the two markets, with no one allowed to leave Xinfadi.

Officials in Fengtai — which has more than two million residents — announced on Saturday that the district has established a “wartime mechanism” to deal with the fresh wave.

Police cars were patrolling the streets outside blocked-off neighbourhoods and a reporter saw one bus carrying workers in hazmat suits.

Published in Dawn, June 14th, 2020