China has completed the construction of a 1,500-room hospital for patients with COVID-19 to combat the rise in infections that the government says are more difficult to contain and which it attributes to infected people or foreign goods
BEIJING – China completed construction on Saturday of a 1,500-bed hospital for COVID-19 patients to combat the rise in infections that the government said were more difficult to contain and attributed to infected people or foreign goods.
The hospital is one of six with a total of 6,500 rooms being built in Nangong, south of Beijing, in Hebei province, the official Xinhua news agency said.
A total of 645 people are being treated in Nangong and the capital of Hebei province, Shijiazhuang, Xinhua said. A 3,000-room hospital is under construction in Shijiazhuang.
Clusters of viruses have also been found in Beijing and in the provinces of Heilongjiang and Liaoning in the northeast and in Sichuan in the southwest.
The latest infections spread with unusual speed, said the National Health Commission.
“It is more difficult to deal with,” said a statement from the Commission. “Transmission in the community already happened when the epidemic was discovered, so it is difficult to prevent.”
The Commission attributed the most recent cases to people or property from abroad. He blamed “abnormal management” and “inadequate worker protection” involved in imports, but gave no details.
“They are all imported from abroad. It was caused by incoming personnel or by imported products from the contaminated cold chain, ”the statement said.
The Chinese government has suggested that the disease may have originated abroad and released what it says is the discovery of the virus in imported foods, mainly frozen fish, although foreign scientists are skeptical.
Also on Saturday, the Beijing city government said travelers arriving in the Chinese capital from abroad would be required to undergo an additional week of “medical monitoring” after a 14-day quarantine, but gave no details.
Across the country, the Health Commission reported 130 new cases confirmed within 24 hours until midnight on Friday. He said that 90 of them were in Hebei.
On Saturday, the Hebei government reported 32 additional cases since midnight, the Shanghai media reported The Paper.
In Shijiazhuang, authorities have completed the construction of 1,000 rooms for the planned hospital, state TV reported on Saturday. Xinhua said that all installations must be completed in one week.
A similar program for rapid hospital construction was launched by the ruling Communist Party at the start of the outbreak last year in Wuhan.
More than 10 million people in Shijiazhuang were tested for viruses on Friday, Xinhua said, citing a deputy mayor, Meng Xianghong. He said 247 locally transmitted cases were found.
Meanwhile, researchers sent by the World Health Organization were in Wuhan preparing to investigate the origins of the virus. The team, which arrived on Thursday, is in quarantine for two weeks, but is expected to talk to Chinese experts via a video link.
The team’s arrival was held back for months by diplomatic disputes that generated a rare public complaint from the WHO chief.
That delay, and the ruling party’s secret orders to scientists not to speak publicly about the disease, raised questions about whether Beijing could try to block discoveries that would undermine its self-proclaimed leadership position in the anti-virus battle.