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The Peking University International Hospital has been locked down today by officials after an ER nurse caught the killer bug while treating a coronavirus patient
A major international hospital in Beijing went into full lockdown today after a medic was diagnosed with COVID-19.
The medical worker, an ER nurse, caught the disease while treating a coronavirus patient at the Peking University International Hospital, officials have said.
The medical facility with 1,800 hospital beds will be disinfected thoroughly and stop accepting new patients to prevent further spread of the virus, according to the local government.
The infected nurse is one of the 25 new cases reported by Beijing officials today, bringing the total in the last eight days to 183 in the city’s worst outbreak since early February.
Tens of thousands of people in the Chinese capital are being tested for the contagion, while neighbourhoods have been locked down and schools closed as authorities battle to contain the cluster.
The locked-down hospital is located in Changping, a district situated in the suburbs of north-western Beijing.
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Sharon Chen/Bloomberg
June 19, 2020 15:34 pm +08
BEIJING (June 19): Beijing reported 25 new infections on Friday, lower than at the start of the week, after China declared that the peak of the outbreak has passed.
But anxiety remains high across the capital as residents went back under partial lockdown and transport links continue to be interrupted. Beijing’s two airports have canceled more than 800 flights scheduled for Friday, while the government tightened other intra-city and cross-province transportation.
Schools have remained closed since Wednesday and citywide housing compounds are under strict control.
China projected confidence on Thursday with its chief epidemiologist saying that the outbreak that’s now spread to 183 people has come under control and that further infections will be “sporadic.”
Still, Beijing should only loosen restrictions after reporting no new cases for two consecutive weeks, Wu Zunyou added in an interview aired Friday on state television.
Wu said in a Thursday briefing that the peak of infection was on June 13, based on the government’s curve showing when patients began to show symptoms or feel discomfort.
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How the new outbreak started remains a mystery. Wu, the chief epidemiologist of China’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said pinpointing its origin is a hard process.
The outbreak emerged in Beijing’s biggest wholesale market, Xinfadi, and the virus was traced back to the chopping board of a vendor handling salmon, prompting a nationwide boycott of the seafood. But global experts have said that there’s no evidence that food can transmit the virus.
Wu Guizhen, China CDC’s chief expert in bio-security, said that the origin was an infected person or contaminated food, and that the seafood market’s conditions expedited the virus’s spread.
The wide range of positive samples detected from the Xinfadi market hint that “the virus has been there for a while,” said Zhang Yong, a researcher at China CDC’s National Institute of Virology Disease Control and Prevention, who studied the genetic sequencing from the Beijing outbreak. Gao Fu, the head of China’s CDC, said earlier this week that the virus has likely been circulating in mild or asymptomatic people since the end of April.
Beijing’s coronavirus cluster found a younger population of people infected compared to Wuhan’s mass outbreak, in which the elderly were found to be the most vulnerable. The latest outbreak, coming when temperatures in Beijing typically surpass 30 degrees Celsius degrees (86 degrees Fahrenheit), is also challenging a traditional theory that the epidemic is unlikely to prevail in hot weather.
After earlier publicizing that the strain in the Beijing outbreak was similar to that in Europe, Chinese experts now believe that the strain looks closer to an older one that also circulated in Europe.
The virus could have been latent in the dark and humid environment at Xinfadi wholesale market in areas that were not sanitized, Zhang said.
https://www.theedgemarkets.com/article/beijing-outbreak-tops-180-china-says-peak-has-passed
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https://twitter.com/MadamMiaow/status/1272080150956511232?s=19
https://twitter.com/ouzt6/status/1272065941698985984?s=19
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Beijing has closed the city’s largest wholesale food market after the discovery of seven cases of the new coronavirus in the previous two days. The Xinfadi market will be disinfected after workers tested positive and the virus was found in the environment.
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https://twitter.com/PhdParody/status/1246786614791221250?s=19
weehingthong 