A girl has a nucleic acid test at Yuting Park in Beijing's Dongcheng district on Saturday. From June 11 to 20, Beijing reported 227 confirmed domestically transmitted cases. All of these patients were receiving treatment in hospitals. (ZOU HONG/CHINA DAILY)
Beijing has been increasing its testing capacity since the epidemic started in January.
Gao Xiaojun, a spokesman for the Beijing Health Commission, said 61 hospitals and medical institutions in the city were able to conduct a total of 47,000 daily tests by late April.
By Saturday, up to 124 hospitals and medical institutions in Beijing were able to conduct more than 230,000 tests a day.
Beijing reported 22 new local COVID-19 patients on Saturday, bringing the total of confirmed patients to 227 since the first new local case was reported on June 11.
The youngest of the new patients is 1 year old, and the oldest is 86. The average age is 42, Pang Xinghuo, deputy head of the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Sunday.
All the cases are related to the Xinfadi wholesale market in southwest Beijing's Fengtai district.
Eight of the 22 new cases on Saturday are employees of soft-drink and snack-food giant PepsiCo Inc's factory in the capital's Daxing district.
Two of its employees had been to the Xinfadi market, according to the company.
The factory has suspended production, all of its employees have had nucleic acid tests and 480 of them were sent to designated sites for isolated medical observation on Saturday.
