SHANGHAI / BEIJING (Reuters) – China is battling the worst outbreak of COVID-19 since March 2020, with a province experiencing a record daily increase in cases, as an independent panel that analyzed the global pandemic said China could have done more to contain the first outbreak.
The state tabloid Global Times on Tuesday defended China’s early treatment with COVID-19, saying that no country had experience in dealing with the virus.
“Looking back, no country would perform perfectly in coping with a new virus … No country can guarantee that it will not make mistakes if a similar epidemic occurs again,” the document said.
China reported more than 100 new cases of COVID-19 by Tuesday’s seventh day. The agency published 118 new cases on Monday, compared with 109 the day before, the national health authority said in a statement.
Of these, 106 were local infections, with 43 reported in Jilin, a new daily record for the northeastern province, and 35 in Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing, the National Health Commission said.
The Chinese capital itself has reported a new case, while Heilongjiang in the north has reported 27 new infections.
Tens of millions of people are in jail while some northern cities are undergoing mass tests amid fears that undetected infections could spread quickly during the Lunar New Year holiday, which will take place in a few weeks.
Hundreds of millions of people travel during the holiday in mid-February this year, while migrant workers return to their home provinces to see their family.
Authorities called on people to avoid travel before the holiday and stay away from mass meetings, such as weddings.
The outbreak in Jilin was caused by an infected vendor traveling to and from neighboring Heilongjiang province, the site of a previous group of infections.
The total number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed infections, fell from 115 a day earlier to 91.
The total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in mainland China is 89,454, while the death toll has remained unchanged at 4,635.
An independent panel of experts who analyzed the pandemic, led by former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, said on Monday that Chinese authorities could have applied more vigorous public health measures. in January last year to contain the initial outbreak.
He also criticized the World Health Organization for not declaring an international emergency until January 30.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that recognizing that China should do better doesn’t mean it hasn’t done enough.
“Of course, we must strive to do better, as do all other countries, like the United States, Britain, Japan,” Hua said at a regular news conference on Tuesday when asked about the review.
A WHO team is currently in Wuhan, the central city of China where the disease was first detected in late 2019, to investigate the origins of the pandemic that killed more than two million people worldwide.
(Reporting by Emily Chow and Wang Jing in Shanghai and Yew Lun Tian and Ryan Woo in Beijing; Editing by Richard Pullin, Michael Perry and Nick Macfie)