BEIJING, March 11. /TASS/. Beijing has introduced a 14-day quarantine for all foreigners arriving in the city from abroad, Zhang Qiang, deputy head of Beijing’s Communist Party committee's organization department, said on Wednesday.
"Today, new rules are coming into force, in accordance with which persons coming in from abroad must be placed on a 14-day individual or collective quarantine, even if they arrive from countries where no significant coronavirus outbreaks have been documented," the official told a press conference.
According to him, in case a person arrives in Beijing on a business visa for a short-term period, he or she will be placed in a special hotel and get tested for the virus. Before the results are in, the person does not have the right to leave the hotel.
According to Beijing officials, on Tuesday, six new imported coronavirus cases were documented among foreigners arriving in China: five Italian nationals and one US citizen.
As of Wednesday, 435 cases of infection have been documented in Beijing, of which 326 people recovered and eight succumbed to the disease. In the past two weeks, no new cases have been detected in 12 out of 16 city districts.
In late December 2019, Chinese authorities notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about an outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, central China. According to Chinese authorities, about 80,700 people have been infected with the virus in the country. The death toll has exceeded 3,150, while about 61,600 patients have recovered. WHO declared the outbreak of the novel coronavirus a global health emergency and named the virus COVID-19. Cases of coronavirus have been reported in 120 countries and territories, including Russia. The largest outbreaks of COVID-19 outside China have been detected in South Korea, Iran and Italy. According to WHO, the total number of people infected has surpassed 110,000 globally, while over 4,000 people have died.