Beijing's Haidian district tightens anti-virus measures

To reduce the increasing number of locally transmitted COVID-19 cases, the Beijing government has asked all residents to stay indoors on Saturday and more districts now require people to work from home in order to curb the epidemic, a senior official said at a news conference on Saturday.

Beijing's Haidian district said on Saturday that all of its residents should work from home starting from May 22 to May 28. People who have to go to the workplace should hold negative results of nucleic acid tests within 48 hours and travel only from home to workplace, according to Xu Hejian, spokesman of Beijing government on Saturday.

Previously, other four districts - Chaoyang, Fengtai, Fangshan and Shunyi - had already asked residents to work from home.

In Haidian and those four districts, all the indoor cultural and entertainment facilities, gyms, training schools and shopping malls should suspend operation. Restaurants should only provide takeout meals and stop dine-in service.

Beijing reported 63 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases between 3 pm Friday and 3 pm on Saturday, bringing the total number of infections to 1,399 since April 22. Fifteen districts are involved, according to Liu Xiaofeng, deputy director of the Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control, at the news conference on Saturday afternoon.

"Of the new infections, 56 were reported in controlled zones, and seven were found from the mass nucleic acid tests at community level," he said. "Fifty-eight new infections among the 63 cases were related to recent clusters."

Recently, Beijing reported several clusters involving a university campus, a wholesale market, a subway renovation project, a bus station and a branch of a logistic company.

Of all 1,399 cases during the latest outbreak by Saturday afternoon, Chaoyang district registered 413 cases, the most in the outbreak, followed by Fangshan, which reported 374 cases since April 22. Fengtai reported 243 cases and Haidian 154 cases during the same period.

As of Saturday, Beijing had 14 high-risk areas for COVID-19 and 23 medium-risk areas, according to Liu.