A toddler has tested positive for coronavirus after playing in an infected girl's blanket for 10 minutes, according to contact tracers in Beijing.

The two-year-old boy is believed to have contracted the virus after his mother, a nursery school teacher, took him to her classroom on June 11.

He spent 10 minutes playing on a blanket belonging to a six-year-old female pupil, who later tested positive the day before he did.

The Hebei Provincial Health Commission says the little boy tested positive on June 15 after showing symptoms including a mild fever.

Officials said the girl was among four members of the same family to test positive on June 14.

She, along with her mum, were infected by her dad and grandmother, both of whom work as suppliers at Xinfadi market in Beijing's Fengtai District, reports say.

This comes amid a new outbreak in Beijing, with the two-old-boy from Anxin in China's northern province of Hebei among 10 new cases.

Four children aged two to 10 and six adults have been infected and their cases are being linked to Beijing Xinfadi Agricultural Products Wholesale Market.

All but one of the 10 new cases were from Anxin County, which is about 90 miles from the Chinese capital, while all 10 cases have been traced back to Xinfadi market or Yuquan East Seafood Market which it supplies, it is reported.

Xinfadi wholesale market provides 70 percent of Beijing's fresh farm produce, and is about 10 times the size of Wuhan's Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market where the original outbreak began.

Health officials in the capital have recorded 158 new COVID-19 cases in just seven days since a primary school pupil's father tested positive on June 11 and became the first new patient in nearly two months.

Asymptomatic carriers continued to be found in daily screenings, but Chinese health authorities do not count those without outward signs of the disease as part of their infection total.

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