Beijing parks closed as city battles ‘severe’ Covid-19 outbreak
- Cluster in northern district prompts tighter controls, with another round of compulsory testing to begin on Tuesday
- Chaoyang and Shunyi parklands are off limits until further notice as residents’ complaints mount
Fifty new locally acquired infections were reported in Beijing on Monday, nine of them asymptomatic, bringing the total to 777 since the latest outbreak began on April 22.
Of the new cases, 21 are employees – and their family members – of a data centre for the Beijing Rural Commercial Bank located in Shunyi district, the city’s health authority said. The infections were detected during compulsory testing.
“The Covid situation in Beijing is complicated and severe, as suggested by the sudden outbreak in Shunyi,” Beijing municipal government spokesman Xu Hejian told reporters on Monday. “Chains of transmission have not been blocked. We must step up controls in key areas.”
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How a Beijing residential compound lives through an Omicron lockdown
A new round of mass testing will start on Tuesday in Shunyi and Chaoyang – the two districts at the centre of the outbreak – and 15 other districts where cases have been found in the past seven days.
Residents in most parts of the city have already undergone three rounds of testing in the past few weeks, and other control measures are in place.