Carriers including Air China, China Southern Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, Hainan Airlines and China United Airlines said they would offer full refunds to passengers who had purchased tickets for flights to or from Beijing.

The drastic reduction in flights came after Beijing introduced a number of measures to limit travel in and out of the city, especially among those coming from districts where new COVID-19 cases have been detected.

Beijing had essentially eradicated locally transmitted cases, but in recent days a fresh cluster of novel coronavirus cases emerged from the city's largest wholesale food market, bringing the total number to 137 as of Tuesday midnight since a locally transmitted infection was reported on June 12.

On Tuesday night, the municipal government upgraded the city's emergency response to the novel coronavirus epidemic from the third to the second level, discouraging traveling, requiring those who must travel out of Beijing to present a negative nucleic acid test result conducted within seven days of departure and suspending interprovincial group tours.