The patient is a 52-year-old man who first checked into a clinic on Wednesday with a fever, Reuters reported, citing the state-owned newspaper People’s Daily.
The patient, identified only as Mr. Tang, confirmed that he had neither left Beijing nor been in contact with anyone who had been traveling overseas in the last couple of weeks. Tang, who hails from Beijing’s Xicheng District, has been admitted to a hospital for treatment and is currently under medical observation.
In a news conference this week, Deputy Mayor of Xicheng District Miao Jianhong confirmed that the temperature checks where Tang and his family live are being enforced, and other public places in the community are being disinfected. In addition, local authorities are conducting an epidemiological investigation to track other potential transmissions.
"Xicheng District will continue its epidemiological investigation and strengthen community controls, environmental sampling of key personnel in key locations, improving the ability of early detection and monitoring," Miao said, CBS News reported.
On Thursday, the Chinese National Health Commission confirmed 11 new COVID-19 cases and four asymptomatic cases in the country, Reuters reported. The confirmed cases are connected to overseas travelers. China does not count asymptomatic patients in the official tally for confirmed COVID-19 cases.
The numbers of novel coronavirus cases and deaths in mainland China have remained unchanged over the last couple of months at around 83,000 and 5,000, respectively. COVID-19-related restrictions in the country were lifted on April 30, although many public places still require temperature checks to enter.
In a recent report, Gao Fu, the head of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Feng Zijian, the CDC’s deputy director-general, warned that China could experience a second wave of COVID-19 infections.
“The risk of local transmission introduced by internationally imported cases remains a major concern,” the report, published in The Lancet medical journal on June 4, warns.
“The most urgent and important measure of the containment and suppression strategies is scaling up testing of each suspected case and all close contacts of those infected,” the report adds.