New COVID case reported in capital although situation 'under control'

Beijing reported a new confirmed COVID-19 case for Thursday while maintaining the epidemic situation is under control in the capital, said senior officials at a news conference on Friday morning.

Xu Hejian, a spokesman for the Beijing municipal government, said that based on two years of fighting COVID-19, Beijing has mature control and prevention measures that have proved to be effective.

"Beijing has launched the emergency response to start epidemiological investigation after receiving the information from the other province," he said. "The risk is under control."

Pang Xinghuo, deputy director of the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said the new confirmed case is a close contact of a COVID-19 case who was confirmed on Thursday in another province. The individual, who took the flight CZ6268 from Harbin, Heilongjiang province to Beijing on Sunday, had a negative result of nucleic acid testing within 48 hours before boarding.

By now, Beijing has identified 45 close contacts of the new case and related control measures have been taken.

Meanwhile, the authority has collected 4,906 nucleic acid testing samples of related people and all results showed negative, according to Pang.

According to the municipal government, the number of people in Beijing who have taken the COVID-19 vaccine boosters has surpassed 10 million as of Friday.

Contact the writer at dujuan@chinadaily.com.cn