The Beijing Health Commission said on Saturday that the city had registered 22 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total infections to 205 since a local cluster was discovered in Xinfadi wholesale market on June 11. 

All the newly confirmed cases were related to Xinfadi market in Fengtai District. The cases were reported in three Beijing districts: 13 in Fengtai, eight in Daxing, and one in Haidian.

Among the cases, half the patients were male and the others are female. 

Four suspected cases and two asymptomatic cases were also registered on Friday, according to the commission.

No imported cases were reported in the same period.

As of Friday, the Chinese capital has found a total of 625 local cases with nine deaths since the start of the virus outbreak in January.

The infection risk is "extremely low" for those who did not have any contact with people related to Xinfadi market from May 30 to June 12, according to Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Over 2.29 million samples collected for testing

Over 2.29 million samples have been collected for nucleic acid testing in Beijing between June 11 and June 20, said Zhang Qiang, a member of the city's epidemic-control office who oversees nucleic acid testing at a press conference. 

Beijing is conducting large-scale nucleic acid testing of food delivery people and couriers to reduce the risk of infection, said Zhang.

People under 14-day quarantine in Beijing for medical observation can only be released if their nucleic acid test result is negative at the end of the quarantine period.

Can the virus survive on food? 

All food, including seafood, cannot be infected with the novel coronavirus, but it can be contaminated, said Li Fengqin, an official from the China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment, at press conference.

Li pointed out that the novel coronavirus cannot replicate itself after contaminating food or packaging, and will not survive for a long period of time under normal temperatures. But, it can survive for a long time under low temperatures, according to Li.

For this reason, the possibility of coronavirus transmission from food or food packaging stored in low temperature cannot be ruled out, Li added.

More: Off the shelves in Beijing, is salmon guilty of spreading coronavirus?

Medics from Wuhan leaves for Beijing

Medics from Wuhan's Tongji Hospital and Union Hospital left for Beijing on Saturday to help battle the recent cluster infections.

The medical team from what was once the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in China brought with them medicine, and testing and protective equipment. They will mainly be taking on the responsibility of conducting coronavirus nucleic acid tests in the Chinese capital.

Beijing to test all 103,000 couriers 

Beijing has began testing couriers for coronavirus from Friday, and no confirmed or suspected cases have been reported so far.

The Chinese capital is expecting to complete collecting samples of all 103,000 couriers from 17 postal and delivery companies by the end of Monday.

China has seen a surge in demand of delivery services amid the June 18 e-commerce shopping festival. Data shows that between June 11 and 20, more than 68 million packages were collected in Beijing, and more than 82 million packages were delivered. Both figures are higher than last year's by over 20 percent.