The Beijing city authorities have ordered a bar at the centre of the latest Covid-19 outbreak to permanently shut and have started a criminal investigation into its staff. The Heaven Supermarket in Beijing’s busy entertainment area Sanlitun has been linked with 320 local infections that spread across the city in the past week. Authorities say it did not strictly follow epidemic control requirements such as checking customers’ test results and temperatures or scanning their health codes. Before the latest cluster emerged, the capital was seeing a tapering off the outbreak that started at the end of April and forced restaurants to ban dining-in, shops to close and many people to work or study at home. Now, with infections spreading across 14 districts of the city, students and school pupils – except those taking the high school entrance exam – have been ordered to remain at home while residential areas have been locked down. Bars and clubs have come under particular scrutiny during the pandemic, with unmasked crowds presenting a higher risk of infections spreading. Hong Kong announced on Tuesday that patrons would be required to show proof of a negative rapid test result to enter bars, pubs or clubs from Thursday, as clusters linked to the city’s nightspots continue to grow. At least 360 infections have been linked to six bar clusters this month. The latest Beijing cluster highlights the challenge of maintaining a “dynamic” zero-Covid policy against the highly transmissible Omicron variant. The city reported 63 new local infections on Wednesday morning, all connected with the bar. It also dealt another serious blow to the city’s restaurant and entertainment industry, which has just reopened after a month-long closure starting in early May. Chaoyang district, the city’s largest district and home to foreign embassies, has closed all entertainment venues. In Sanlitun alone, 700 restaurants have been ordered to stop dining-in, while 74 bars, over 200 beauty salons, cultural venues, gyms and game parlours have also had to close. Chaoyang district’s market and industry supervision authority has also issued a penalty notice to Beijing Yutai Tangguo Entertainment, which owns Heaven Supermarket, revoking its licence and accusing it of a “serious violation of law and breach of trust”, according to state news agency Xinhua. “The bar did not strictly implement preventive and control measures such as controlling the density of human flow, which led to the spread of the outbreak in a ferocious way,” Pan Xuhong, deputy chief of the Beijing Bureau of Public Security, told a media briefing on Tuesday afternoon. “The police have started a criminal investigation against the bar and the relevant staff for allegedly obstructing the prevention and control of infectious diseases.” Other municipal government agencies responsible for tourism and health have also launched a joint investigation, he added. The cluster emerged when three men who lived in different districts but had all visited the bar were found positive in mass testing last Thursday. Police said so far six people have been put under criminal investigation for breaking health control rules linked with the cluster in the bar. ‘Ferocious’ Beijing bar cluster revives Covid-19 worries for China These include three bar goers who broke home isolation rules and led to more people being isolated. One of them, a 31-year-old who lived in Tongzhong district, took public transport to several places and went to restaurants and shopping malls before testing positive – resulting in 29 people being placed in central isolation and 1,800 people in home quarantine.