New Delhi: The situation in China's capital, Beijing, has turned "grave" with the discovery of clusters of COVID-19, while the country's financial hub, Shanghai, has recorded 39 additional fatalities from the virus, the most in a single day since the epidemic began last month, news agency PTI reported.
The Chinese mainland recorded 21,796 instances on Saturday, with 1,566 positive cases and the remainder asymptomatic cases, largely in Shanghai, according to China's National Health Commission.
After the city registered 22 new community instances on Saturday, Beijing, the seat of China's top leadership, went on high COVID-19 alert, preparing to test specific parts of the populace.
The community was on high alert when ten middle school kids tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday, prompting the school's suspension of courses for a week.
According to Pang Xinghuo, deputy head of the Beijing Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, unsuspected local infections began approximately a week ago throughout the city and affected schools, tour groups, and families.
“There were hidden transmissions for a week and the infected people came from different backgrounds and a wide range of activities,” Pang was quoted by Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post in its report.
Pang added that mass testing would be done on elderly citizens who were on tour groups, construction workers, and others who work at the school where the cluster was discovered.
Beijing Communist Party chief Cai Qi, mayor Chen Jining, and other city officials met twice on Friday to plan control operations.
“The meeting pointed out that our city [Beijing] had suddenly recorded some cases and many transmission chains were involved. The risk of further hidden transmission is high. The situation is urgent and grim,” state-run Beijing Daily reported.
Beijing has taken rapid and severe actions in response to the appearance of new clusters, including organising nucleic acid testing in important groups, implementing partial closed-off management, and halting classes in the locations and schools that identified the instances, according to Global Times.
Given the one-week transmission time, unknown sources of some confirmed cases, and people's activities in the prior period, Wang Yuedan, a professor at Peking University's Department of Immunology, said the danger of widespread infections is still significant.
However, he informed the newspaper that the pandemic scenario might not be as bad as in Shanghai.
He pointed out that the approaching May Day holidays, during which millions of Chinese are expected to travel for a one-week vacation, might represent a significant problem in terms of avoiding the virus, as many individuals have made travel plans, thereby increasing the chance of transmission.
The Omicron form of the virus continues to be the epicentre in Shanghai.
Apart from Shanghai, new local COVID-19 cases were reported in 16 additional provincial-level regions on the mainland, including 60 in Jilin, 26 in Heilongjiang, and 22 in Beijing, according to the study.
According to the data, 29,531 persons were being treated for the coronavirus across the country. Shanghai recorded 23,370 new cases on Saturday, bringing the city's total to almost 466,000 since March 1.
The metropolis of 26 million people reported 39 COVID-19 deaths on Saturday, increasing the total number of deaths in the city to 87 since it was placed under lockdown at the end of last month due to the outbreak of the Omicron virus.
Since the coronavirus first appeared in Wuhan in December of this year, China's overall death toll from the virus has risen to 4,725.
(With PTI Inputs)