Beijing expands Covid mass testing in bid to prevent major outbreak

A resident wearing a mask walks past half-empty shelves near bags of vegetables at a convenience store in Chaoyang district in Beijing (Ng Han Guan/AP)

Workers have put up fencing and police restricted who could leave a locked-down area in Beijing as authorities in the Chinese capital stepped up efforts to prevent a major Covid-19 outbreak like the one that has all but shut down the city of Shanghai.

People lined up for throat swabs across much of Beijing as mass testing was expanded to 11 of the city’s 16 districts.