China on Saturday tightened restrictions in two cities south of Beijing, already under quarantine, in the hope of stemming the most serious Covid-19 outbreak in six months in the country where the new coronavirus appeared. a year ago.
As the Chinese New Year approaches, celebrated in February, the city of Shijiazhuang suspended metro traffic until further notice on Saturday morning in order to “help in the prevention and control of the epidemic,” the officials said. authorities. For their part, residents of Xingtai are prohibited from leaving their homes for a week.
A total of 18 million people in Hebei province, in the vast townships of Shijiazhuang and Xingtai, which have large rural areas, were already banned from leaving the area unless there was a compelling reason. of a handful of cases in recent days.
Schools are closed as well as means of communication (highways, airport, trains, long-distance coaches) in these two cities of Hebei, the province surrounding Beijing.
China succeeded last spring in curbing the epidemic which has since spread across the globe, killing nearly 1.9 million. The country officially counted 4,634 dead, the last counted in May.
But during the past week, Hebei has reported more than 300 contaminations, including nearly 200 asymptomatic. The country now has 87,000 cases of contamination accumulated for a year, a figure unrelated to the considerable reports announced in Western countries.
A provincial official explained that the outbreak was imported from abroad.
The Chinese authorities have emphasized in recent months that the new contaminations correspond to strains from abroad introduced by travelers or on frozen food.
On Chinese New Year, hundreds of millions of people travel across China to visit friends and families, Chinese Vice Minister of the National Health Commission Zeng Yixin expressed concern on Saturday “of an increase on this occasion of the risk of transmission “of the virus.
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