A Wanda Plaza in Beijing's Shijingshan district is closed for sanitation work on Thursday after a customer said she tested positive for COVID-19. Photo: Li Hao/GT

A shopping mall in Beijing's Shijingshan district was shortly closed for sanitation work on Thursday after a customer said she tested positive for COVID-19, triggering widespread fear among Beijing residents.  

Disease prevention and control departments will go to the site for COVID-19 sample collection and everyone at shops in Wanda Plaza will undergo nucleic acid tests, several shops and staff members from the plaza reached by the Global Times said on Thursday.

A video that circulated online shows a woman shouting and crying into a phone, yelling she tested positive for COVID-19, while passers-by cautiously walked away.

The customer received her nucleic acid test result while having lunch at a noodle restaurant at the shopping mall, a staff member from the plaza told the Global Times.

The mall was immediately closed for sanitation work to be carried out. 

The woman, surnamed Xie, was sent to a designated hospital and her close contacts were sent for quarantine.

Some accused Wanda Plaza of not properly monitoring customers for signs of COVID-19, but vendors at the shopping mall said that a QR health code and normal body temperature are required for customers to enter the mall.

The staff member from the plaza told the Global Times that the woman's QR health code and body temperature were normal, otherwise she would not have been allowed in.

"All shops have been closed to customers and we are waiting to get tested," said the staff member. 

A Wanda Plaza in Beijing's Shijingshan district is closed for sanitation work on Thursday after a customer said she tested positive for COVID-19. Photo: Li Hao/GT

The woman also faced strong criticism on China's social media, with many questioning how she had managed to leave her community and whether she was from a high-risk district in Beijing. 

The chaotic scenes from Wanda Plaza emerged after Beijing reported only one new confirmed COVID-19 case Wednesday.