Coronavirus in China: residents of five Beijing neighbourhoods told to stay home
- Affected communities are all in Daxing district, which is home to the city’s second airport and where China’s first infections involving the B117 variant were reported last week
- All 1.7 million residents of Daxing have been told they cannot leave the city without official permission and a negative test result
The communities are all in Daxing, which is home to the city’s second airport and where six new cases were confirmed on Tuesday. The only other case reported in the city that day was in Shunyi district, which is home to Beijing’s main airport, Capital International.
Besides the five neighbourhoods, the stay-at-home instruction also applies to all Beijing schoolchildren, with the restriction taking effect on Thursday for kindergarteners and on Saturday for middle and high school pupils. The city’s primary schools are already on their winter holiday.
The remainder of Daxing’s 1.7 million residents have been told they cannot leave Beijing unless they have official permission to do so and can provide a negative test result within the previous 72 hours.
The local government has also banned all gatherings of 50 or more people and said “weddings should be postponed, funerals simplified, banquets cancelled”.
The restrictions come just days ahead of the annual meetings of Beijing’s legislature and political advisory body – both of which run for four days from Thursday and Saturday, respectively – with some sessions set to be held online to protect against further infections.