Correspondent in Beijing
Combat action in Beijing. The Chinese capital is again on alert after Friday the discovery of an outbreak of Covid-19 infection in a huge fruit and vegetable market. At least 79 people have been infected, raising the specter of a second epidemic wave in the most populous country in the world.
Anxiety is suddenly back in the megalopolis of 21 million inhabitants who had not registered any new case for sixty days, and gradually regained its activity, after months of fighting against the virus. “In one day, we return to square one of the epidemic. When will it end? It's too depressing! ” confesses a thirty-something Beijing employee.
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At the edge of the moist summer, the shopping centers have rediscovered the torpor of the epidemic winter this weekend, deserted by a population on the lookout. Authorities sounded the general mobilization to contain the detected outbreak at the Xinfandi market, in the southwest of the capital. "The risk of the epidemic spreading is very high, so we must take proactive measures , " Xu Hejiang, spokesman for the municipal authorities, said on Monday.
The government immediately launched a massive screening campaign, aimed at testing "all market personnel and the inhabitants of the surrounding area" , and quarantined ten neighborhoods near this complex, large as 157 football fields and which provides the essential supply of fresh produce from the capital. More than 76,000 nucleic acid tests have already been conducted on Monday morning, detecting 36 new cases and establishing the assessment at 79 over four days. “The good news is that all the cases are linked to the market, which means that we are at the beginning of the propagation chain, and that it is controllable. The bad news is that there is usually an extraordinary traffic in Xinfandi, " summarizes Zhang Wenhong, an epidemiologist at Huashan Hospital in Shanghai, on the Weibo platform.
Back to school postponed
About 15,000 people visit this site daily, according to Caixin magazine. Authorities have already tracked down 200,000 people who have visited the stalls in the past two weeks. The Daixing district even calls itself a "state of war" , and the agents go door to door to find the potentially contaminated individuals.
The exact origin of the outbreak has not been confirmed by the authorities, but traces of the virus have been detected on imported salmon, said the market owner. This was enough to further mistrust products from abroad, while China has barricaded itself since the border was closed on March 28.
This caution contrasts with the optimism displayed in Europe.The temperature controls at the entrance to the buildings which had just been gradually lifted over the past few days were urgently replaced across the city. The municipality has postponed the return of primary schoolchildren scheduled for Monday, and many Beijingers have decided to work at home, under the anxious eyes of the rest of the country, where only a handful of cases have been detected in recent days.
Travelers from Beijing are already arousing suspicion and are subject to reinforced controls in many frightened cities. The city of Daqing in the northern province of Heilongjiang even decreed about twenty-one days for them!
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The next few days will tell whether these massive and rapid measures implemented will make it possible to contain this local focus, as the neighboring South Korea has been successfully doing for several weeks. It is a life-size test in the eyes of the second world power which expects to hatch other local nests of infection. The diligent response in Beijing, the showcase of the communist regime, "will serve as an excellent example for other provinces to control the homes without stopping the whole of society," said Zhang.
The mobilization of the authorities and the vigilance of the population show that China is still on the lookout, faced with a number of cases, however minimal, reported to the 1.4 billion inhabitants. This caution contrasts with the optimism displayed in Europe. Sunday, France recorded more than 400 new cases of Covid, and President Emmanuel Macron sounded the end of confinement in Île-de-France, in a climate of relief.
