At the beginning of June, Beijing declared that the city was finally COVID-free. However, recent reports have shown that the virus has entered the city on its second wave after 55 days of no new cases, and experts don't know how this happened.
As of June 17th, more than 300,000 have been tested, confirming 137 new cases. They are beginning a new phase of lockdown, shutting down schools again, canceling flights, and securing a few residential compounds.
Scientists believe that the infections are linked to the Xinfadi Agricultural Wholesale Market in Beijing, parallel to Wuhan's wet market where coronavirus originated. Authorities have temporarily shut down the food market, yet the real source of the new outbreak remains a mystery.
The last recorded positive case was way back in April. The first positive case in the Beijing outbreak began with a man without recent travel history and visited a hospital on June 10 after experiencing symptoms. He was hospitalized a day later for coronavirus.
Possible Origin
Through contact tracing, medical experts and officials believe he may have contracted the infection from the wholesale market, either directly or someone he was recently in close contact with. The 112-hectare public market sells fresh produce, seafood, and meat with up to 10,000 customers and workers doing daily transactions. In response, local health authorities tested workers, customers, and nearby residents.
They also swept market surfaces and found a number of them tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, including a chopping board for imported salmon. The fish showed no signs of infection so they suspect that perhaps an infected European worker must have handled the salmon or its packaging while processing. Analyzing the genomic structure of the current virus, it's sequence was related to the strain found in people returning to China from Europe, reported a local paper.
Yang Peng, an official with the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, had said that another theory of the new infection spread may be from a local who picked up the virus from somewhere else and brought it to the market. 'Where exactly the virus came from is still uncertain,' he said.
Dirk Pfeiffer, a veterinary epidemiologist at the City University of Hong Kong, agrees with the latter theory. 'I think it is much more likely, and therefore plausible, that it was brought to the market by infected humans,' he said.
Beijing's Second Wave
Beijing has currently raised its emergency level as the virus's second wave spread from the Fengtai district, where the market is, to nine other districts. 137 infections have been reported in the last six days.
Chen Bei, the deputy secretary-general of Beijing's municipal government, said, 'Beijing faces [the] serious danger of imported cases and spread in the city and the country.' The local government has closed down factories and ordering businesses just two weeks after they had reopened.
Other businesses may continue operations but with stricter regulations. Public spaces such as parks, museums, and libraries were ordered to limit visitors while schools on all levels were suspended.
One local resident expressed, 'I'm in shock. It was supposed to be nearly over and then we suddenly get another wave of cases. The virus is scary and we still haven't developed a vaccine for it.'
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