Beijing reports one new local virus case

Beijing reported one new local case of COVID-19 related to Dalian in Northeast China's Liaoning province on Tuesday in the capital, according to the Beijing Municipal Health Commission on Wednesday afternoon.

So far, two local cases related to Dalian, which has experienced an outbreak in recent days, have been reported in Beijing.

Pang Xinghuo, deputy head of the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, gave details of the case at a news conference on Wednesday.

The patient is a 34-year-old male who is the son-in-law of the previous local case reported on Monday.

He was taken to a centralized quarantine site on Monday after his mother-in-law was confirmed as a COVID-19 patient. Then, he was confirmed as a COVID-19 patient on Tuesday after medical observation, with a body temperature of 38.1 C and nucleic acid testing result that was positive.

Pang reminded residents in the city should continue to wear masks and report symptoms of fever in a timely way.

"People can make a reservation to receive the tests if they are worried about being infected," she said.

By noontime on Wednesday, 606 residents living in the same building as the two cases got their testing results, with all showing negative outcomes, according to Wu Bin, deputy head of Changping district, where the community is located.

Up to 12,649 nearby residents had received the tests by noon on Wednesday and 5,801 of them got their results - all showing negative, she added.

The previous local case involved a 53-year-old woman from East China's Anhui province who came to Beijing on July 14 to visit her daughter. She stayed at her daughter's home in Changping district.

Contact tracers found that the woman had traveled to Jinzhou in Liaoning on July 16 by train and had a dinner with an asymptomatic coronavirus carrier surnamed Gao, who came from Dalian.

The woman traveled back to Beijing on July 19 and stayed at her daughter's home from July 20 to 23.

On Friday she was transferred to a centralized quarantine center for observation, and she was confirmed with COVID-19 on Monday.