China lifts new quarantine center, cases rise

A northern Chinese city was building a 3,000-capacity quarantine center to cope with a potential surge in COVID-19 patients as infections spike ahead of travel for the Lunar New Year holidays.

State media on Friday showed crews of workers leveling the ground, pouring concrete and assembling the precast rooms in a field outside Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province, which has seen a significant spike in infections.

The scene was reminiscent of views last year when China quickly erected field hospitals and converted gyms into isolation centers to combat the first outbreak linked to the central city of Wuhan.

China has mostly managed to contain the national spread of the coronavirus, but the latest spike worries about its proximity to the capital, Beijing, and the impending flood of people planning to travel far to reunite with their families on the country’s most important holiday. .

The National Health Commission said on Friday that 1,001 patients are being treated for the disease, of which 26 had a serious prognosis. In the last 24 hours, 144 new cases were registered, he added. Of those, 90 were in Hebei, with the Heilongjiang region further north reporting 43.

Nine of the cases were imported from abroad, but there were also local infections in Guangxi in the south and in the northern province of Shaanxi, highlighting the ability of the virus to move through the vast country of 1.4 billion people. despite quarantines, travel restrictions, and electronic monitoring.

In total, China has reported 87,988 infections and 4,635 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

The rebound in northern China coincides with the visit of experts from the World Health Organization to the country to collect data on the origin of the pandemic. The group arrived in Wuhan on Thursday, where the virus was first detected in late 2019. Team members must pass a two-week quarantine before they can make face-to-face visits.

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