BEIJING: China raised its emergency warning to its second highest level and canceled more than 60% of the flights to Beijing on Wednesday amid a new coronavirus outbreak in the capital — a sharp pullback for the nation that declared victory over the virus in March and a warning for the rest of the world about how tenacious this virus really is.
New infections spiked in India, Iran and US states including Florida, Texas and Arizona as authorities struggled to balance restarting economic activity without accelerating the spread of the pandemic.
European nations, which embarked on a widescale reopening this week, looked on with trepidation as the Americas struggled mightily to contain the first wave of the pandemic and Asian nations like China and South Korea reported new outbreaks, giving rise to fears of a second wave.
Chinese officials described the situation in Beijing as “extremely grave.”
“This has truly rung an alarm bell for us,” Party Secretary Cai Qi told a meeting of Beijing’s Communist Party Standing Committee.
The party’s Global Times said 1,255 flights to and from the capital’s two major airports were scrapped by Wednesday morning, about two-thirds of those scheduled. Beijing Capital Airport is traditionally the world’s second busiest in passenger capacity.
Since the virus emerged in China late last year and spread worldwide, there have been more than 8.1 million confirmed cases a