Beijing firms told to cancel events as more virus cases appear

BEIJING • The Chinese capital is hunkering down after more Covid-19 cases were reported following a local company conference, with officials asking for events and activities to be moved online.

Companies should cancel all conferences unless they are essential and take other steps to reduce public interaction as much as possible, the Beijing authorities said at a press briefing late on Thursday, after seven cases were detected in one day. Companies and individuals hosting events will be held responsible, the authorities said.

Beijing reported six locally transmitted cases and one asymptomatic case on Thursday. Many of them were PetroChina staff and they had been to a company conference in the capital between Oct 28 and Nov 10. A participant in the conference was later confirmed in Jilin province to be infected with Covid-19.

China is struggling to contain its fourth coronavirus outbreak with the more infectious Delta variant in the past five months. More than 1,000 locally transmitted cases have spread across 21 provinces.

Nowhere are the stakes of maintaining the Covid-Zero approach higher than in the tightly guarded capital. It is concluding a Communist Party plenum with about 400 senior political leaders and plans to host the Winter Olympics starting in February. In March, lawmakers from around the country will gather in the city for the country's annual legislative session.

A failure to contain the current outbreak would be a political as well as a medical blow in China.

The latest wave in Beijing came fast and infected a larger number of people, creating a wider trajectory of disease, making prevention particularly difficult, said city government spokesman Xu Hejian.

The cases have triggered another bout of extensive contact tracing and more curbs, including the closure of a large hospital and a mall in downtown Beijing. The residential compounds where the patients and their close contacts live have been locked down.

Elsewhere, the coastal city of Dalian has become the country's latest hot spot, reporting 52 local cases and another five asymptomatic infections on Thursday, a daily count higher than any other Chinese city affected in the ongoing nationwide outbreak since mid-October, and more than doubling from 21 cases from a day earlier.

The number of people travelling out of Dalian has fallen by 96.5 per cent to 918 per day on average, a local transportation official said, after the city of 7.5 million people imposed curbs on public transport and also warned residents against leaving Dalian unnecessarily.

The city has demanded that kindergartens, as well as primary and high schools, stop in-person lessons. It has also closed a number of libraries and museums, and started a second round of city-wide mass testing campaign.

Dalian, a leading port for seafood shipments as well as fruit and some meats, has also ordered all businesses handling imported chilled and frozen foods to suspend operations, the state-backed Global Times newspaper reported.

A total of 1,149 local cases were found in China between Oct 17 and Nov 11. While the number is tiny compared with many outbreaks outside the country, the local authorities have gone all out to extinguish the flare-up, with Beijing not expected to change its zero-tolerance policy any time soon.

As at Thursday, mainland China has reported 98,099 confirmed symptomatic Covid-19 cases, including both local infections and those arriving from abroad. The total death toll remained at 4,636.

BLOOMBERG, REUTERS, CHINA DAILY/ASIA NEWS NETWORK