China reports three deaths and 240 new cases of COVID-19 | Pandemic | coronavirus | WORLD

The National Health Commission of China reported this Wednesday three new deaths due to COVID-19 and the detection of 240 new positives for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus the day before, 227 of them due to local contagion.

The deaths were recorded in Shanghaiconverted for two months into the epicenter of the outbreaks in the Asian country and whose 26 million inhabitants remain in strict confinement.

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The provinces with the highest number of cases of community transmission were Shanghai (east, 96), Beijing (52), Sichuan (center, 49) and Tianjin (north, 16).

China, which applies a severe “zero tolerance” policy towards the new coronavirus, is going through a wave of outbreaks attributed to the omicron variant which is causing record numbers of infections not seen since the start of the pandemic in the first half of 2020.

Health authorities also reported today the detection of 1,065 asymptomatic cases, 1,000 of them local (the majority in Shanghai), although Beijing does not count them as confirmed cases unless they show symptoms.

The remaining thirteen infections, found among travelers from abroad, were detected in various regions of the country.

The National Health Commission also detailed that, until last local midnight (4:00 p.m. GMT on Tuesday), 391 patients were discharged after successfully passing the COVID-19.

The total number of active infected in the China continental amounts to 5,205, 301 of them in serious condition.

According to the institution’s accounts, since the start of the pandemic, 222,370 people have been infected in the country and 5,217 have died.

To date, more than 3.9 million close contacts with those infected have been medically monitored, of which 313,372 remain under observation.