`When I heard the news, I thought to myself, ‘Oh my god, it’s happening again,’` said Shawn Wang, a civil servant who lives nearly 4 km from Tan Phat Dia market.
The vast market includes many warehouses and trading centers, supplying 80% of Beijing’s fruits and vegetables.
A security officer blocked the entrance to the seafood market near Tan Phat Dia on June 14, which had to be closed because of the discovery of a series of new Covid-19 cases.
Before discovering the first case in the market last week, Beijing had recorded 8 consecutive weeks without new community infections.
While movie theaters are still closed, many restaurants and shops have reopened, traffic is starting to get crowded, and traffic jams have reappeared.
`I’m very worried because Tan Phat Dia is near my house,` Wang said.
Wang noticed that the supply of vegetables in his local supermarket began to decrease.
Chole Tan, a technology engineer in Phong Dai district, who just had a free Covid-19 test at a local hospital on June 14, said she and her acquaintances began to let down their guard before the outbreak re-emerged.
`For many days without any new cases of infection, people started to relax, sometimes forgetting to wear masks, sometimes not even wearing masks,` said Tan, who lives 4 km from Tan Phat Dia market.
People line up to have their body temperature checked before entering a market in Beijing on June 15.
The Beijing government is aggressively handling the new epidemic cluster by conducting large-scale testing and mobilizing a large number of grassroots workers and volunteers to participate in the fight against the epidemic.
By June 14, Beijing had tested more than 76,000 people, including nearly 13,000 of the 29,000 people who reported having visited the market since May 30 and 40,000 people living nearby, according to city government statistics.
Some areas in the city have raised their alert level from low to medium.
The government also stopped plans to reopen some elementary schools, causing dissatisfaction among parents.
`With a quick response like this one, I believe Beijing will control the virus,` Liu said.
Worried that he wouldn’t be allowed to return to the city, Wang had to cancel his plans to return to his hometown in Hebei province to watch the boat race.
Some provinces in China warned people not to go to Beijing, while others said they would test and quarantine people coming from Beijing.
Public health experts are still hunting for the source of the outbreak, focusing on virus samples found on a cutting board of a seller selling imported salmon at Tan Phat Dia market.
Tan Phat Dia agricultural wholesale market in Beijing
Tan Phat Dia agricultural wholesale market in Beijing.
In an interview on Chinese national television on June 14, Wu Zun You, director of Epidemiology of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC), said the virus could exist.
Duong Bang, a researcher at CCDC, said the virus’s DNA shows it may have come from Europe.
Dale Fisher, professor of infectious diseases at the National University of Singapore, said the virus can live longer in refrigerators or frozen conditions.
Meanwhile, health officials in Wuhan, Hubei province, where Covid-19 first broke out, lowered the emergency response level over the weekend, allowing indoor sports and entertainment facilities to open.