China was battling coronavirus outbreaks in the country’s cold northeast, prompting new quarantines and travel restrictions ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday next month.
The country reported another 118 cases on Tuesday, 43 of them in Jilin province. In Hebei province, neighboring Beijing, there were another 35 new cases, while Heilongjiang province, on the border with Russia, 27 new infections were identified.
Beijing, where some suburban residential complexes and towns are under quarantine, reported only one new case.
In a fourth northern province, Liaoning, quarantines and travel restrictions were also imposed to prevent the virus from spreading further, within measures imposed in much of the country to prevent further outbreaks during the February holiday.
The authorities asked citizens not to travel, advanced the closure of schools by a week and organized massive campaigns for diagnostic tests.
The capital of Hebei, Shijiazhuang, is building a prefabricated housing complex so that more than 3,000 people can quarantine in an effort to curb infections.
China has reported a total of 88,454 cases and 4,635 deaths since the coronavirus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. China does not include in its statistics people who test positive for the virus but have no symptoms .
A multinational team of researchers from the World Health Organization is now in Wuhan, serving a two-week quarantine before beginning their visits in hopes of obtaining clues about the origin of the pandemic that has killed more than two million people. .
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