Fears of a Beijing lockdown as Macau tightens entry controls

Beijing canceled scores of flights, shut schools and blocked off some neighborhoods as it ramped up efforts to contain a coronavirus outbreak that has fanned fears of wider contagion.

Many in Beijing have had their daily lives upended by the resurgence of the disease over the past six days, with some fearing the entire city is headed for lockdown as the number of new cases mounts.

Health officials reported 31 new infections for June 16, taking cumulative cases since last Thursday to 137 in the capital's worst resurgence in four months, with 356,000 people tested since Sunday.

And Macau started quarantining people who had been to Beijing 14 days prior to their arrival in the gambling hub.

Two visitors have been quarantined so far. As there are no flights between Beijing and Macau recently, authorities expected any arrivals to enter Macau via land borders.

Beijing's Xinfadi market to which the new outbreak has been traced as the capital's largest trading center for farm produce, with high levels of product traffic and clusters of people, said Pang Xinghuo, a senior disease control official.

"The risk of the outbreak spreading is huge and controlling it is difficult," she said. "[We] can't rule out the possibility the number of cases will persist for a period of time."

Norway, meanwhile, said salmon from the country is not the cause of the outbreak after many Chinese restaurants and retailers stopped selling imported salmon.

Fisheries minister Odd Emil Ingebrigtsen said Chinese and Norwegian officials had met on Tuesday and concluded that Norwegian salmon was unlikely to be the source of the virus.

Although roads and highways in Beijing were still open and companies and factories had not been told to halt work, authorities stepped up movement control measures.

About 60 percent of scheduled flights at the Beijing Capital International Airport had been canceled or were likely to be by last night, aviation data tracker Variflight showed, as were about half the flights at Daxing, the city's other major airport.

State media said train passengers received ticket refunds, an apparent bid to discourage travel, even though services have not been officially canceled.

All outbound taxi and car-hailing services and some long-distance bus routes were canceled on Tuesday when officials put the city back on a level two alert, the second-highest in a four-tier virus response system.

About 27 neighborhoods were designated medium-risk areas.

Kindergartens, primary schools and high schools shut across Beijing, as did some bars, restaurants and night clubs.

"What I'm worried about is whether there will be a level one response like it was before, making it impossible for people to work," said a 23-year-old media worker.

China imposed strict bans on movement this year in Wuhan, where the virus was first detected in December, before spreading worldwide to infect more than eight million people.

Beijing's Xinfadi wholesale food center is far larger than the Wuhan market, however.

Outside Beijing, the provinces of Hebei, Liaoning, Sichuan and Zhejiang have reported new cases linked to Xinfadi.