By Zhu Jingruo and Wang Haonan from People’s Daily
Beijing has rolled out various measures to build a solid line of defense in the battle against the
COVID-19 epidemic by plugging the loopholes in epidemic response and raising the standards of
epidemic control.
The capital city had reported 205 confirmed cases as of June 19. It has raced against the clock and
made all-out efforts to contain the epidemic in a proactive manner since the first new local case
was reported on June 11.
So far, Beijing has strengthened inspection and screening to ensure that no case is left off,
focusing on the service sector with high population mobility and medical institutions.
Beijing has done blanket tracking on cases, conducted epidemiological investigations of
confirmed cases and enhanced epidemic prevention and control of hospitals.
A nurse from the emergency department of Peking University International Hospital (PUIH) was
diagnosed with the coronavirus on June 19, drawing public attention.
At a press conference held on the next day, Beijing introduced the details of the case and PUIH’s
prevention and control measures, as well as the city’s control of hospital-acquired infections,
responding to public concerns.
The capital has sent 11 medical groups and 14 experts to guide and supervise fever clinics of 20
medical institutions with a relatively higher numbers of confirmed cases. They summoned heads
of eight hospitals, five districts and two administrative units for face-to-face meetings regarding
the problems discovered. Besides, they also requested medical institutions to take serious
measures to identify problems according to the city’s 16 precautions against hospital-acquired
infections, and conquer such problems with quick actions, asking medical institutions and local
governments to shoulder their responsibility.
The city has strengthened supervision and screening in key industries with high population
mobility, mainly focusing on the service sector, and immediately rectified problems identified.
Beijing has launched comprehensive monitoring and law enforcement on epidemic control in
public places of massive gathering, such as medical institutions, shopping malls, supermarkets,
hotels, and bus stations, as well as centralized and secondary drinking water suppliers.
A total of 479 units and places failed to meet standards and were requested to rectify to close
loopholes and build a solid line of defense.
Focusing on key groups of people, key areas and key sectors, nucleic acid tests will first be
conducted for high-risk groups related to affected markets, including Xinfadi, and their
neighboring communities, and then gradually extended to people working in catering businesses,
shopping malls, supermarkets and bazaars, residents in the 36 medium- and high-risk areas, and
those working in parcel and food delivery.
A total of 2,083 testing stations are operating at 474 testing sites set up at the city and district
levels, where 7,472 medical workers, seconded from 59 Tier-Two and Tier-Three medical
institutions, 28 third-party testing institutions and 20 disease control and prevention centers, are
working in shifts to take samples at full capacity.
Nearly 2.3 million people in Beijing had been sampled for nucleic acid tests as of 6 a.m., June 20.
Reports confirmed that the number of daily samplings in the city has increased to around 500,000
from 8,000 a week ago, and the testing capacity has also been improved significantly.
