A health-tracking app developed by China’s central government and National Health Commission to monitor the spread of COVID-19 has marked Beijing’s eastern Chaoyang District as a “high-risk zone.”

As of 6 p.m. Sunday, the district, which is home to several embassies and many office buildings, had a red alert indicating the highest risk classification on the publicly accessible app. Other Chinese cities — including Wuhan, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in China; the northeastern cities of Harbin and Suifenhe; and the southern city of Guangzhou — are all marked as low- or middle-risk areas.

Pang Xinghuo, the deputy director of Beijing’s disease prevention and control center, said Monday that Chaoyang District had been marked as a high-risk zone because local infection clusters had been reported there in the past 14 days.

Last week, Beijing had reported three new coronavirus infections linked to a single imported case; all were among the same family living in a Chaoyang District residential complex. Sixty-two of the family’s close contacts were traced and put under medical observation.

Recent weeks have seen a surge in imported coronavirus cases in Harbin and Suifenhe — both over 1,000 kilometers from Beijing — prompting the two cities to take strict outbreak control measures similar to those previously implemented in Wuhan and surrounding cities. (Image: People Visual)