Infections in Sichuan county surpass 1,000

Linshui county in Guang'an, Sichuan province, conducted another round of mass coronavirus testing on Friday, as its cumulative COVID-19 infections rose above 1,000.

The testing covers all 1.01 million residents, including those belonging to the so-called floating population.

During the testing, traffic was suspended and all supermarkets and farm produce markets were closed, according to the Linshui county emergency response headquarters for COVID-19.

The county had conducted three earlier rounds of mass testing from Monday to Wednesday.

It reported 20 locally transmitted confirmed cases and 102 asymptomatic carriers on Thursday, the Guang'an health commission said on Friday, bringing the total tally of infections to 1,050, in the province's most serious outbreak since the pandemic.

The latest outbreak was detected in Linshui on May 9, when the county reported three asymptomatic carriers.

Luo Ronghong, an official of the Guang'an health commission, said that when the first cases were discovered, the highly transmissible Omicron variant had spread at the community level, which led to the current high daily caseload.

Linshui county is racing against time to comb through the population to find infection risks through mass testing, Luo added.

Linshui was locked down on May 10, one day after the outbreak. No new spillovers have been reported from outside Guang'an or outside Sichuan. The number of cases in non-controlled areas decreased significantly, and zero-COVID status at the community level will be achieved soon, said Zhu Xiaoping, chief expert of the Sichuan Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Capital reports 54 cases

Meanwhile, China's capital continues its COVID-19 epidemic control and prevention measures to deal with the increasing number of cases driven by cluster infections.

Beijing reported 54 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases between 3 pm on Thursday and 3 pm on Friday, bringing the total number of infections to 1,336 since April 22.

Liu Xiaofeng, deputy director of the Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control, said at a news conference on Friday that of the 54 new cases, 51 were related to the recent clusters.

Beijing recently reported several clusters involving a university, a wholesale market, a subway renovation project, a bus station and a branch of a logistics company, totaling more than 100 cases.

The latest cluster reported on Monday, involving a branch campus of Beijing Institute of Technology in Fangshan district, has led to 11 confirmed cases by Friday afternoon.

All of the 671 teachers, students and other staff of BIT at this campus have been transferred to centralized quarantine places, said Li Zhenjian, vice-principal of BIT.

"The institute has sent more teachers and staff into the centralized quarantine location to take care of the students," he said. "We will make all efforts to ensure the students' health and safety."

All restaurants in Beijing should continue to suspend dine-in service and school campuses continue to be closed to the outside.