By Brenda Goh and Steven Bian
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – The recent outbreaks of COVID-19 in China in the northeast come from travelers entering the country or contaminating frozen food imports, the National Health Commission (NHC) said on Saturday.
NHC Minister Ma Xiaowei made the comments at a government meeting, where he also said that the virus was spreading to rural areas and that the handling of the recent situation exposed how the prevention and control measures were relaxed.
“Since December 2020, epidemic groups have taken place in Beijing, Sichuan, Liaoning, Hebei and Heilongjiang,” said a statement posted on the NHC website citing Ma’s briefing.
“They mainly have the following characteristics. First, they are all imported from abroad, caused by travelers from abroad, or items imported from the contaminated cold chain.”
The total number of cases remains well below what China saw at the height of the outbreak in early 2020, but concerns about a new wave are growing with the Lunar New Year a month from now.
This increase occurs when a team of researchers led by the World Health Organization (WHO) is quarantined in the city of Wuhan, where the disease was first detected in late 2019. The team aims to investigate the origins of the pandemic that has already killed almost 2 million people worldwide.
China is the only country that claims that COVID-19 can be transmitted through cold chain imports, although WHO has minimized the risks and released a narrative by state media that the virus existed abroad before it was discovered last year in the central city of Wuhan.
The country last week saw the number of daily cases jump to a peak of more than 10 months, and on January 15 it reported 130 new cases of coronavirus on the continent, against 144 cases a day earlier.
Of these cases, 115 were local infections, 90 of which in Hebei province, near Beijing, which was the most affected in the last wave.
Another 23 cases were found in Heilongjiang province in the northeast, while two cases were reported in Beijing. The authority also notified 79 new asymptomatic patients, which it does not classify as confirmed cases, were found on January 15, compared with 66 a day earlier.
As a result, some 28 million people have been confined so far and Ma said the latest outbreak spread quickly due to activities like wedding banquets or large group meetings, and that it was difficult to control because the community broadcast had already taken place. when cases were discovered.
Xinhua warned on Saturday, however, that government officials should not “scream wolf” and be too quick to declare that they are going into “war mode”, saying that it could increase unnecessary panic and affect normal production.
The total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in mainland China is now 88,118, while the death toll remains unchanged at 4,635.
(Edited by Cynthia Osterman and Jacqueline Wong)