People line up at a nucleic acid testing site in Beijing on January 19, 2022. Photo: VCG

Beijing's Fengtai District is rolling out mass nucleic acid testing on Sunday after an outbreak connected to cold chain facilities in the district has spilled over to at least three cities of two provinces.

Three spilled-over cases were reported in Jinan and Liaocheng, East China's Shandong Province and one in Datong city of North China's Shanxi Province. All the cases were either cold storage workers in Beijing or close contacts of infected workers.

Since January 15, Beijing reported a total of 39 positive COVID-19 infections, of which 25 were from Fengtai District, six from Haidian, five from Fangshan and the other two were from Chaoyang and economic development zone, respectively.

At least 20 patients were engaged in cold-chain related works, media reports said. 

The cold chain related transmission was caused by the Delta virus, affecting Chaoyang, Fengtai and Fangshan districts. The Omicron-related transmission chain was tracked to international mails, which concentrated in Haidian District, according to Pang Xinghuo, an official with Beijing's CDC on January 21. 

The two cases detected in Jinan were truck drivers. Both are close contacts of patients working at the Fengtai District's Xi'nanjiao Cold Storage Plant. They were quarantined on January 21 before being confirmed as COVID-19 patients, according to Jinan's anti-epidemic authorities on Sunday. 

An asymptotic case was detected in Liaocheng's Gaotang County. The patient was an employee working at a cold storage facility in Beijing's Fengtai District.

Another patient, 32, detected in Shanxi's Datong, was also an employee at Fengtai District's Xi'nanjiao cold storage plant. She left Beijing for Datong via high-speed train on January 20, and received home quarantine before testing positive for the virus, local health authorities reported on Sunday. 

Global Times