BEIJING: The Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a reminder on Sunday that people in Beijing should not un-necessarily visit Tianjin and those in Tianjin should not visit the capital unless necessary. It is also suggested that commuters between the two cities work from home.
Anyone in Beijing who has visited Tianjin’s Jinnan and Nankai districts since December 23, 2021, will be quarantined at home and tested. Others who have traveled to Tianjin since the same date need to promptly report to their local communities, employers and hotels, the CDC said.
Huge uncertainties exist for the Tianjin outbreak as the source of infection remains unknown, Global Times reported on Sunday, citing an unnamed immunologist. The Tianjin outbreak may pose risks to Beijing and the upcoming Winter Olympics, because of the large number of commuters working and living in the two cities, the immunologist warned.
The inter-city train between Tianjin and Beijing is operating normally as of press time.
The Chinese mainland reported 165 confirmed COVID-19 cases on Saturday, with 92 linked to local transmissions and 73 from overseas, data from the National Health Commission showed on Sunday.
A total of 46 new asymptomatic cases were also recorded, and 675 asymptomatic patients remain under medical observation.
Confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland now total 103,619, with the death toll remaining unchanged at 4,636 since January last year.
China has fully vaccinated more than 1.21 billion people, or 86.25 percent of the country’s total population against COVID-19 as of Friday, the National Health Commission said on Saturday. Meanwhile, North China’s Tianjin, a municipality some 100 kilometers to the southeast of Beijing, has started a citywide nucleic acid testing after 20 people tested positive for COVID-19, authorities said Sunday.
It is one of the latest regional outbreaks in China since Shaanxi Province in the country’s northeast had reported nearly 2,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases since December, and smaller outbreaks were found in Guangdong of the south, Zhejiang to the east, and Henan in central China.
The city advised residents not to leave Tianjin for unnecessary reasons, the government said late on Saturday. -Agencies
