The Chinese capital ordered the closure of part of its cinemas on Saturday, as the country faces an epidemic outbreak of COVID-19 less than 100 days before the Beijing Winter Olympics.
The imperial city, which organized the Summer Games in 2008, will become the first city in the world to host the Winter Olympic competition next February.
In this context, the authorities, which follow a zero tolerance policy against the smallest case of covid-19, resort to radical measures to eradicate an epidemic outbreak for a very limited time, with less than 300 cases.
At least fourteen provinces have been affected, out of the total 30 in the country, and the virus reached Beijing ten days ago.
To curb the contagion, all cinemas in the Xicheng district will be closed until November 14, as ordered by the municipality.
This district, which groups neighborhoods west of Tiananmen Square, has one million inhabitants.
This decision comes as China reported 59 new locally-sourced covid cases nationwide this Saturday, a record number since mid-September.
Among them, there are two more cases in the Chinese capital.
These figures, which may seem low compared to those recorded in other parts of the world, are causing the authorities to redouble their vigilance in the face of the Winter Olympics, which will begin on February 4.
The new focus of the epidemic is more than 650 kilometers from Beijing, in the city of Erenhot, near the border with Mongolia.
The spread of covid-19 can be controlled "in less than a month"Virologist Zhong Nanshan, one of the leading experts in the fight against the disease in the Asian country, said this Saturday.
As a precaution, some six million Chinese are confined in cities where cases have been detected.
Entry to many regions is conditional on submitting a negative test, especially for travelers from areas where infections have recently been reported.
On Friday, the Beijing authorities canceled hundreds of flights and asked its citizens to postpone weddings and hold shorter funerals, after tightening containment measures to stop new outbreaks of covid-19.
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