Beijing has asked people, especially the ones working for all the government departments and State-owned enterprises, to stay in the capital for the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival in order to reduce cross-city traffic flow and cut infection risks of the current COVID-19 outbreak, a senior official said on Thursday.

Xu Hejian, spokesman of Beijing municipal government, said at a news conference on Thursday afternoon that those people mentioned above should not leave Beijing during the coming three-day festival from Saturday to Monday unless they get approval for important official business.

"All the citizens should reduce their trips out of the city and not go to places with epidemic outbreaks," he said. "If people who go out of the city interact with the epidemic during their trip, they should delay their returning plans to the capital".

Wang Feng, vice-principal of the Beijing University of Chemical Technology, where 27 locally transmitted cases have been reported by Thursday afternoon this week, said at the news conference that the college has postponed the registration work for the freshmen and moved the related work online.

Beijing reported 10 COVID-19 cases on Wednesday and another 10 cases between midnight and 3 pm on Thursday — all from the quarantine locations, according to Liu Xiaofeng, deputy director of the Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control.

He said the epidemic condition of the infection cluster in the Beijing University of Chemical Technology is getting stable and the other cluster in the High School Affiliated to Minzu University of China where seven cases have been reported by Thursday afternoon is mainly controllable.