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.