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The number of new daily Covid-19 cases in Beijing has dropped to single digits as the recent outbreak is now firmly under control. However, Beijing has doubled the Covid-19 quarantine period from 14 days to 28 as scientists fear that the type of coronavirus that set off Beijing’s recent outbreak in the Xinfadi market may be more contagious than the one in Wuhan. Most people under quarantine in Beijing are workers from the beef and lamb section of the Xinfadi market, a high-risk group for Covid-19 infection. The first cured Covid-19 patient in Beijing’s latest cluster was discharged from hospital after recovering. As from July 4, residents in Beijing’s low-risk areas no longer needed to have negative nucleic acid test results when leaving the city. The daily number of new confirmed cases in the city fell from 36 at the peak to only one or two cases in the past few days. The total number of confirmed cases in the latest outbreak in Beijing reached 335.

Xin’an county in the Xiong’an New Area in Hebei province has implemented the “strictest measures” to fight Covid-19 by imposing a countywide lockdown. The county is located about 130 kilometers southwest of Beijing. Cases in the county were found to be closely linked with Beijing’s Xinfadi market. More than 2,100 Xin’an residents run aquatic product businesses in the market, the government said. In the foreseeable future, Covid-19 cannot be eradicated and regional outbreaks are still possible, said Wang Guangfa, Respiratory Expert at Peking University First Hospital.

Chinese biopharmaceutical firm CanSino Biologics announced that a recombinant coronavirus vaccine (Ad5-nCoV) the company developed with a military research team has received special one-year approval for military use by the Health Bureau of the Logistics Support Department of the Central Military Commission (CMC). The vaccine, called Ad5-nCoV, is being jointly developed by CanSino and a team led by Major General Chen Wei from the Institute of Biotechnology under the Academy of Military Medical Sciences. Special military drugs have to obtain the approval of the military logistics support department and China’s national drug supervision department before being used for civilians. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), clinical trials are under way for 17 vaccine candidates, seven of which have been developed in China. One candidate developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca is in phase three studies.

The new Covid-19 outbreak in Beijing has dealt a heavy blow to the nation’s seafood sector, pushing sales down 60% to 70% compared with pre-pandemic levels, and analysts said the industry is facing the worst time in decades. Seafood orders are canceled and marketplaces are shut in Beijing, where about 25% of China’s seafood consumption takes place. Consumers elsewhere in the country are cautious, too, and it is taking a heavy toll on the sector. From February to May, the sales volume of salmon products fell 60% year-on-year. Sales of king crab were down 80% and those of turbot dropped 70%, Cui He, President of the China Aquatic Products Processing and Marketing Alliance (CAPPMA), told the Global Times. Meanwhile, some fresh salmon products are returning to the shelves after health authorities clarified that there is no evidence suggesting salmon is a direct host or intermediate carrier of the virus which causes Covid-19. However, insiders said that as public confidence in salmon products has dropped, it will take at least another three months for the market to return to normal.

Chinese researchers have issued an early warning over another potential pandemic caused by an influenza virus in pigs, but disease control experts said the public should not overreact and hog farms have shown no signs of related disease. Scientists from the China Agricultural University, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other institutes detected a pig influenza virus bearing genotype 4 (G4), which is contagious among pigs and has the possibility of jumping to humans, as the G4 virus is able to bind with human cells. The study was published in the U.S. science journal PNAS. Researchers collected samples between 2011 and 2018 among pigs in 10 Chinese provinces and regions, and found that the virus was prevalent in pigs since 2016. Some 10.4% of pig farm workers tested positive for antibodies against the virus, and up to 4.4% of the general population may have been exposed. The G4 virus is genetically descended from the H1N1 strain behind the 2009 outbreak.

As new daily Covid-19 cases in the U.S. reached record numbers, U.S. President Donald Trump was reported to become more angry at China, which he holds responsible for letting the pandemic escape from China. The World Health Organization (WHO) is sending a team to China this week to prepare to identify the source of the coronavirus, noting that the visit does not mean the virus originated in China. “We can fight the virus better when we know everything about the virus, including how it started,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual press conference.

This overview is based on reporting by the Global Times, China Daily, South China Morning Post and Shanghai Daily.

More than 8 million people in Beijing have been tested for Covid-19 since the first cases in the new outbreak emerged on June 11, and just eight days after the first infection was identified, Beijing declared the transmission had been controlled. Beijing’s testing capacity has increased from 40,000 samples on June 11 to a maximum of 1.08 million samples per day now. While many people were registered for testing by their employers or residential communities because of known links to the Xinfadi market, others were identified using big data. Some people received phone calls from the disease control unit of the Beijing municipal government, saying they had been in the vicinity of the Xinfadi market and asking whether they had visited the market. If so, they were instructed to get tested. Some of those contacted had only passed by the market in their car on the ring road or in the subway, and therefore could not have been infected. “The prevention and control situation remains complicated, we cannot lower our guard in the slightest,” said Beijing government Spokesman Xu Hejian at a briefing.

China is imposing a stricter quarantine and management regulation on imported frozen products, which could incur millions of dollars in losses for some foreign exporters whose seafood products are still under quarantine, industry insiders said. The longer customs inspection procedures could also lead to food spoilage. However, domestic demand remains high, observers noted. They also warned that such rules apply to all exporters regardless of which country they’re based in. “Chinese Customs inspections have tightened. In the past, about 10% of frozen food could be inspected on average at the Shanghai and Tianjin ports. But the inspection rate is now 100%,” an employee at the Shanghai port told the Global Times. He added that nucleic acid tests are required to prevent contaminated imported food.

Weng Qiang, Purchasing Manager at Sunkfa Holding Group, a leading seafood company based in Beijing, told the Global Times that some imported seafood, regardless of the country of origin, is being held until further notice as part of measures to curb the coronavirus. A spokesperson for a Shanghai-based fresh food e-commerce platform who spoke on condition of anonymity told the Global Times that most of their U.S. fruit imports are proceeding “as usual,” but exporters are being asked to provide a guarantee that their products are free from Covid-19 infection. “Most of the large-scale U.S. exporters are very cooperative,” he said. “The possibility of contaminated imported seafood or meat imported in China after packaging and cold-chain transportation is very high, so China is just protecting the safety of its citizens, and the new regulation also applies to all exporters,” an e-commerce platform spokesperson said. The China Aquatic Products Processing and Marketing Alliance (CAPPMA) said that Russia, the U.S., Norway and Argentina are the four largest seafood exporters to China. During the 12 months ending June 30, 2019, Chinese imports of U.S. seafood reached USD969 million, the Global Times reports.

Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Barcelona in Spain have detected traces of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater samples from March 2019, nine months before the first case of Covid-19 was reported in China, disproving the allegation that the virus first emerged in the city of Wuhan. The new findings were published on the websites of the university and of medRxiv, a scientific articles repository. The presence of the virus in the sewage water offers us a clue about the existence of the virus in Spain, either among people or animals, before China reported its first Covid-19 patient in December 2019, Wang Guangfa, Respiratory Expert at Peking University First Hospital, told the Global Times. When the coronavirus spread in Spain in March last year, the virus may have been less contagious, which explains why it took such a long time to find a Covid-19 patient in Europe. It then became more infectious as it mutated, Wang added, urging researchers to examine the virus’ full genome sequencing to further track the virus’ origin.

One of China’s inactivated Covid-19 vaccine candidates has started the phase-3 clinical trial in the United Arab Emirates, according to vaccine developer China National Biotec Group (CNBG), which will cooperate with Group 42, an Abu Dhabi-based artificial intelligence and cloud computing company, for the clinical trial. The vaccine has completed its phase 1 and 2 clinical trials in China. The results showed a good safety record and no severe adverse reactions. Another inactivated Covid-19 vaccine developed by the CNBG’s Beijing Institute of Biological Products has also entered into clinical trials. To increase its manufacturing capacity, the company has built a large production unit in Beijing that can meet high bio-safety protection requirements. Chinese authorities also approved the phase one trial of the nation’s first recombinant protein vaccine. This vaccine is the nation’s third type, after an adenovirus vector vaccine and an inactivated vaccine, to enter clinical trials in China. China’s recombinant protein vaccine candidate has been jointly developed by the Institute of Microbiology and Anhui Zhifei Longcom Biopharmaceutical. The United States, Israel, Japan, Argentina, Thailand and other countries are working on similar recombinant vaccines. The World Health Organization (WHO) had recorded around 142 candidate vaccines in development around the globe, 13 of which have entered clinical trials.

This overview is based on reporting by the Global Times, China Daily, South China Morning Post and Shanghai Daily.

At the beginning of last week, about 7,200 residential communities in Beijing entered the “wartime management mode” as the capital city took strict prevention and control measures following the latest outbreak of a Covid-19 cluster that was first detected at a local seafood market in Fengtai district. Between 21 and 36 new cases were reported in Beijing last week, but experts were divided whether the outbreak had been brought under control. Facing growing uncertainties, central and local-level officials urged the public to remain on high alert, considering the virus’ mutation, unclear origin of the infection cluster and unknown transmission routes. Local officials were urged to take resolute and decisive measures to effectively prevent the spread of the epidemic. Of the more than 200 new Covid-19 patients, 2 were in critical condition and 11 others were severely ill.

By June 22, 103,000 delivery workers of logistics companies in Beijing had received nucleic acid tests to ensure safe deliveries to residents following the mid-year e-commerce promotions from June 1 to 16. From June 11 to 20, logistics companies in Beijing collected 68 million packages, up 22.86%, and delivered 82 million packages, up 25.57% year-on-year. Major online catering platforms also announced plans to have their delivery workers tested. So far, no Covid-19 case has been reported in the postal and logistics industry in the city.

Beijing now has the capacity to conduct 1 million tests a day. Almost 2.3 million people – about 10% of the city’s population – were tested for Covid-19 between June 13 and 19. The samples were collected by close to 7,500 medical workers at 2,100 sites. China banned imports from U.S. poultry producer Tyson Foods and ordered a Beijing Pepsi factory producing potato chips to close after Covid-19 cases were detected.

Chinese experts differ on when the new outbreak in Beijing began and where exactly the virus originated. In the latest speculation, Gao Fu, Director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said the outbreak probably did not occur in early June or late May, but probably a month earlier. Different from Gao, Wu Zunyou, Chief Epidemiologist at the CDC, said that the Covid-19 cluster centered at Beijing Xinfadi Market may have begun as early as late May. Wu has said the outbreak in Xinfadi Market is similar to the epidemic in Wuhan’s Huanan seafood market. The common feature of these markets is that they are cold and wet places, which are very suitable for viruses to survive.

“We’re trying to control the outbreak, it’s better to keep people on their toes,” Zeng Guang, Chief Scientist at CDC, said. “Controlling the outbreak is not the end. The conditions that breed epidemics still exist.” His comments came a day after Wu Zunyou, the CDC’s Chief Epidemiologist, said Beijing’s recent Covid-19 outbreak had been brought under control, although more cases were expected to be detected as a result of mass testing in the city. Wu later clarified his statement, saying the outbreak was under control and that the conclusion was based on science, but warned that “prevention and control measures cannot be relaxed”.

Major seafood markets in China have launched massive nucleic acid tests for their working staff and took environmental samples. Although there is no proof that salmon was the source of the sudden spike in Beijing, the latest research shows that the virus “came from Europe,” and virologists believe the epidemic was most likely caused by contaminated food. Industrial insiders noted that the incident in Xinfadi market will have a huge – although temporary – impact on the imported seafood market across China and on the world supply chain. They noted that the latest outbreak is also a reminder to major seafood exporters to China to strengthen their health quarantine and product quality. Many supermarkets and restaurants in China have taken salmon off their shelves and sealed them for further inspection.

The China Aquatic Products Processing and Marketing Alliance (CAPPMA) said that Russia, the U.S., Norway and Argentina are the top four seafood exporters to China. In 2019, Russia exported 1.7 million metric tons of seafood, with 70.5% going to China. Seafood exports from Norway to China are steadily rising. In 2019, Norway’s exports reached 168,503 tons. Eason Li, China General Manager of Hofseth International, a Norway-based seafood producer, told the Global Times that Beijing Customs has stopped imports of all seafood products, while Shanghai has raised quarantine requirements for imported salmon. The company exported about 100,000 tons of salmon to China in 2019, the Global Times reports. The virus could survive for months on contaminated seafood or meat in temperatures between -10ºC and -30ºC, but there is no evidence that the virus can replicate in fish, so salmon is not a viral carrier.

Beijing has now become a “no-go zone” for other parts of China, as many places strengthened health checks on arrivals from Beijing. Many Beijing residents now prefer not to leave the city over fears of the strict quarantine measures they may face in other places. The city of Daqing in Heilongjiang province imposed a 21-day quarantine for people returning from Beijing. A government employee from Jinan, capital of Shandong province, told the Global Times that even people from low-risk Beijing districts will only be allowed to stay in hotels after they have provided valid nucleic acid test results.

Authorities said that with a sound prevention and supervision procedure in place, cross-border personnel exchanges – such as bilateral fast-track arrangements with South Korea, Singapore and Germany – need not be stopped or suspended in the wake of Beijing’s new coronavirus infections. Flights to and from Beijing were largely canceled shortly after Beijing raised the emergency response to Level II, under which Beijing residents who want to leave the city are required to show a negative nucleic acid test result in the past 7 days.

Testing the whole population of Beijing has been ruled out for now. A total of 300 asymptomatic patients were found after 9,899,828 residents were tested in Wuhan during a 10-day citywide test period from May 14, with no confirmed cases. The tests cost CNY900 million, paid by the Wuhan city government.

The new Covid-19 outbreak in Beijing is likely to deal a blow to the revival of its tourism sector, with an analyst predicting a 30% to 40% year-on-year drop in revenue during the three-day Dragon Boat Festival holiday this week. Group tours from other provinces to Beijing have been suspended. China saw a total of 95.98 million domestic tourist trips during the Dragon Boat Festival in 2019, up 7.7% year-on-year. National tourism revenue stood at CNY39.3 billion, up 8.6% year-on-year.

This overview is based on reporting by the Global Times, China Daily, South China Morning Post and Shanghai Daily.

The Xinfadi Wholesale Market in Beijing, where Covid-19 cases were detected

Beijing has reported a new cluster of more than 100 Covid-19 cases at the Xinfadi wholesale food market in Fengtai district. At the market, the SARS-CoV-2 virus was detected on the chopping board of a salmon seller. The market has been closed, raising concerns that seafood and vegetable prices in Beijing would rise. According to the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Commerce, the Xinfadi market alone supplies about 70% of the city’s vegetables and around 10% of its pork. Six main markets which are a major source of fresh vegetable and meat supplies to restaurants in Beijing have been ordered to fully or partially suspend operations. More than 20 residential compounds where clusters have been reported have been put in quarantine. The 252 agricultural product markets in Beijing will conduct disinfection on a daily basis.

On June 15, China reported 49 new locally transmitted cases, of which 36 were detected in Beijing after reporting the first new infection in 55 days on June 11. Beijing designated 98 institutions and hospitals for groups or individuals to undergo testing. The daily maximum testing capacity is more than 90,000. Fengtai district is in the process of testing all 46,000 residents living in communities in the vicinity of Xinfadi and the 1,500 personnel and more than 4,000 vendors at the market. The Xinfadi market trades 18,000 tons of vegetables, 20,000 tons of fruits, more than 3,000 pigs, around 1,500 sheep, about 150 cattle, and more than 1,500 tons of seafood on a daily basis.

Especially Japanese restaurants in the Chinese capital fear that customers will stay away and salmon imports are expected to plummet. Major supermarkets in Beijing, including Carrefour and Wumart, stopped selling salmon. Zeng Guang, Senior Researcher at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said the virus strain was different from the ones found in China, suggesting it is a mutated variety from Europe. Experts said it is extremely unlikely for seafood like salmon to be the carrier of the coronavirus. Wu Zunyou, Chief Epidemiologist at the CDC, said that fish in their natural habitat cannot catch coronavirus, however, they can be contaminated by workers during capture or transportation. China imports about 80,000 tons of cooled and frozen salmon each year. Chile, Norway, the Faeroe Islands, Australia and Canada are the main sources of salmon imports.

The Global Times reported that experts predict Covid-19 could make a strong comeback as countries are relaxing their prevention measures, and may be even stronger the second time around. The U.S., whose infection numbers will soon surpass 2 million, is engulfed by massive street protests; an impatient Europe rushed to lift lockdowns before infections haven’t even ebbed; and an underprepared South America saw a surge in infections as winter approaches in the Southern Hemisphere. After the U.S., where the epidemic is the most severe, has gradually resumed work, the epidemic in many states began to show signs of a rebound, which has also been witnessed in some Middle Eastern countries such as Iran, Zhang Wenhong, a Shanghai-based infectious disease expert, told Chinese media. Zhang warned that the second wave of the epidemic is coming, adding, “Brazil, Russia and India have not seen their peaks, so I don’t know when the number of infected people will come down.” “I dare not use the word ‘second wave’ as I believe the first wave has yet to pass. Yet, many countries have already relaxed their prevention measures,” Wu Zunyou, Chief Epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Global Times.

Health experts said that the U.S. and Europe, which rushed to loosen their anti-epidemic policies by resuming work and business when the epidemic was not completely over, face the risk of a second outbreak. Wang Guangfa, Respiratory Expert at Peking University First Hospital, said carefully monitoring overseas arrivals is the key to China’s domestic epidemic prevention. Otherwise, cluster or regional infections could reappear.

Beijing and Wuhan both announced plans to rebuild their public health emergency response systems over the next three years and improve their monitoring mechanisms for diseases of unknown causes. Experts called for rebuilding to expand to a national scale to better safeguard people’s health and safety. The cities’ three-year plans both have two parts: better utilizing public health monitoring systems and expanding medical resources to accommodate and treat patients suspected of having or being diagnosed with infectious diseases. Beijing plans to further improve the layout of its “3+2” infectious disease hospitals: three key infectious disease specialized hospitals on the front line, one alternative hospital for foreign patients, plus the Xiaotangshan hospital as a backup. The city will also increase the total number of negative-pressure hospital wards to 700 and ensure a sufficient amount of necessary medical supplies by the end of 2022, which will meet the requirements for a public health emergency response for at least 30 days.

Employees of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) who need to travel abroad to countries such as the U.S. and Brazil, where the Covid-19 epidemic is still raging, are to be offered two vaccines for urgent use produced by two institutes affiliated to the China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm). Both are inactivated vaccines that have shown safe results with no distinct adverse reaction during the first two phases of clinical trials.

China Southern flight CZ392 from Dhaka to Guangzhou is to be suspended for 4 weeks from June 22, after 17 passengers onboard the most recent flight tested positive for coronavirus. It is the first flight to be cancelled under the CAAC’s new “circuit-breaker” rule.

This overview is based on reporting by the Global Times, China Daily and Shanghai Daily.

Chinese tourists eagerly ventured outside their home cities as they enjoyed a five-day holiday from May 1 till May 5. The number of people traveling outside their home cities jumped nearly 50% at the start of the Labor Day weekend, compared with the first day of the Tomb Sweeping holiday on April 4. Bookings for outbound flights from Beijing jumped 15 times in just half an hour after Beijing announced the lowering of its emergency response level and lifted other travel restrictions. The country’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism said there were nearly 85 million domestic tourist trips made in the first three days of the holiday. Tourism revenue totaled CNY35.06 billion from May 1 to May 3. Mao Shoulong, Professor of Public Administration at the Renmin University of China, told the Global Times that work will resume completely in Beijing after the May Day holiday.

The annual sessions of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) will start on May 22 and 21 respectively. They were postponed from early March due to the coronavirus pandemic. This shows that the Covid-19 epidemic in China is fully under control, according to the Global Times. Beijing last week lowered its epidemic emergency response from the top level to level II, after the capital city recorded zero new imported and domestically transmitted cases for 13 consecutive days. Neighboring Tianjin and Hebei province also lowered their response level. The Beijing municipal government announced that the city will not require domestic arrivals to provide a negative nucleic acid report before checking into hotels as long as they can present the green health code. The capital city also lifted the 14-day quarantine requirement for people from other low-risk areas in China. But the requirement remains in place for people arriving from Hubei province and medium- and high-risk areas as well as international arrivals.

Yung Chan, an NPC Deputy and Vice Chairman of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, said that the annual political meetings would be shorter this year in the wake of the coronavirus epidemic. At the NPC session, the GDP growth target for this year will be announced. It is expected to be set between 0% and 3%. The two sessions are expected to focus on public health, including discussing a biosecurity law and a revision to the law on animal epidemic prevention.

China and the Republic of Korea have agreed to open a fast-track lane for key business, logistics, production, technical and service personnel with an urgent need to travel between the two countries. Due to China’s temporary suspension of entry by most foreigners, which started in late March, only foreigners coming to China for necessary economic, trade, scientific or technological activities or for emergency humanitarian needs can apply for visas. Xing Haiming, the newly appointed Chinese Ambassador to the Republic of Korea (ROK), told Yonhap News Agency in Seoul that China had only issued 108 visas around the world recently, with many of them issued to citizens of the ROK.

Hong Kong will extend mandatory quarantine for all inbound travelers from the mainland, a measure that was supposed to expire on May 7, for another month to June 7. Starting from February 8, Hong Kong has been requiring all travelers entering Hong Kong from the mainland, including both Hong Kong residents and non-residents, to undergo a mandatory quarantine for 14 days. Students, school staff and some other personnel will be exempted. Hong Kong’s economy could fare even worse than expected and shrink by between 4% and 7% in 2020 because of the serious and sustained impact of the coronavirus pandemic, Financial Secretary Paul Chan said. Last year, it shrank by 1.2% due to the U.S.-China trade war and anti-government unrest.

The latest row between China and the U.S. about the origin of the coronavirus was further escalating, with U.S. President Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo suggesting that the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and the Chinese authorities insisting that the virus emerged naturally. President Trump even warned that he would impose more sanctions on China if it was proven the virus originated in the country. Pompeo claimed that the WIV is located close to the wet market were some of the first Covid-19 cases were detected. However, the WIV has two locations and the BSL-4 maximum containment lab – holding bat coronavirus samples – is located 50 kilometers from the city center, Yang Zhanqiu, Deputy Director of the Pathogen Biology Department at Wuhan University, told the Global Times. He added that “Western politicians are making baseless accusations without getting their facts straight. Their actions reflected their eagerness to make China the scapegoat of the pandemic.” China opposes any arbitrary international inquiry into the Covid-19 pandemic that would presume its guilt and politicize its investigation to stigmatize China, Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng said. “One should not accuse China first and then run so-called international investigations just to make up the evidence,” he added. Le opposed holding China accountable or demanding it make reparations, saying such remarks are a “preposterous political farce”. Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet has said it is “not helpful” and “unfair” to blame China for being the source of the Covid-19 pandemic. He said the international community should instead work with the Chinese authorities in dealing with the outbreak. “China didn’t want this epidemic. China isn’t responsible for this pandemic. It’s happened,” Horton said in an interview with Chinese broadcaster CCTV.

Nine vaccine candidates have entered human trials and more than 70 others are under preclinical studies. China was quickly into this global effort, with five of those nine vaccines developed by domestic companies. “It will be very difficult for all the 32 vaccines developed by the Chinese vaccine producers and more than 100 being developed around the world to go through all the phases,” Zhu Fengcai, Deputy Director of the Jiangsu Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said. He added that his team anticipated moving vaccine trials to countries where Covid-19 was still prevalent to run random, double-blind and placebo-controlled trials. Yang Xiaoming, Chairman of the China National Biotec Group, which has two inactivated vaccines in clinical trials at subsidiaries, told China Central Television (CCTV) that China was no longer suitable for phase three trials.

China’s manufacturing sector further recovered last month but a challenge emerged from external uncertainties, officials and analysts said. The official purchasing managers index (PMI) for the manufacturing sector came in at 50.8 for April, versus 52 the previous month, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said. Statistician Zhao Qinghe said that 99.7% of surveyed large and medium-sized manufacturers had resumed work. The Caixin China General Manufacturing PMI for April returned to contraction territory at 49.4, with the sub-index for new export orders falling to the lowest level since December 2008.