Beijing faces severe Covid crisis
Jan 23, 2022
Beijing [China], January 23 : The COVID-19 situation in the Chinese capital Beijing is severe and complex and the city has beefed up anti-epidemic measures through wider mass testing, imposing travel restrictions for people in COVID-19 risk areas, a media report said.
The COVID-19 situation in Beijing now is "severe and complex," Global Times quoted Xu Hejian, spokesperson for the Beijing Municipal government, as saying on Sunday news conference.
Beijing is also requiring residents to take nucleic acid tests for purchasing medicines to cure fever, cough and others after the city reported nine new local infections on Sunday and registered a total of 43 cases during the past week, said the Chinese publication.
Li Ang, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Health Commission, said that starting on Sunday, residents who purchased medicines related to fever, cough, infections and dry pharyngeal pain within the past 14 days or in the future have to take a nucleic acid test within 72 hours.
Wang Guangfa, a respiratory disease expert at Peking University First Hospital, said that the current epidemic prevention and control work in the city is difficult, as the intergenerational transmission time of the Omicron variant is short and the low temperature in winter increases the difficulty, according to Global Times.
