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.