BEIJING (AP) – China on Saturday completed construction of a 1,500-room hospital for patients with COVID-19 to fight a rise in infections that the government said are harder to contain and blamed on infected people or to goods from abroad.
The hospital is one of six, with a total of 6,500 rooms built in Nangong, south of Beijing, Hebei Province, the official Xinhua news agency said.
China largely contained the coronavirus that was first detected in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019, but has suffered an increase in cases since December.
A total of 645 people are being cared for in Nangong and the provincial capital of Hebei, Shijiazhuang, according to Xinhua. A 3,000-room hospital is being built in Shijiazhuang.
Virus groups have also been found in Beijing and Heilongjiang and Liaoning provinces in the northeast and Sichuan in the southwest.
The latest infections spread unusually, the National Health Commission said.
“It’s harder to handle,” a Commission statement said. “Community transmission has already occurred when the epidemic is found, so it is difficult to prevent it.”
The Commission blamed the latest cases of people or goods arriving from abroad. He accused the “abnormal management” and “inadequate protection of workers” involved in imports, but gave no details.
“They are all imported from abroad. It was caused by incoming personnel or goods imported from the contaminated cold chain, ”the statement said.
The Chinese government has suggested that the disease could have originated abroad and released what it says was the discovery of the virus in imported foods, mostly frozen fish, although foreign scientists are skeptical.
Also on Saturday, the Beijing municipal government said travelers arriving in the Chinese capital from abroad should spend an additional week of “medical surveillance” after a 14-day quarantine, but gave no details. .
Nationwide, the Health Commission reported 130 new confirmed cases within 24 hours through midnight on Friday. It was said that 90 of these were in Hebei.
On Saturday, the Hebei government reported an additional 32 cases since midnight, Shanghai’s The Paper reported.
In Shijiazhuang, authorities have completed construction of 1,000 rooms of the planned hospital, state TV said on Saturday. Xinhua said all facilities should be completed within a week.
A similar program of rapid hospital construction was launched by the ruling Communist Party at the beginning of last year’s outbreak in Wuhan.
More than 10 million people in Shijiazhuang underwent virus testing late Friday, Xinhua said, citing a deputy mayor, Meng Xianghong. It was said that 247 cases of local transmission 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, was under quarantine for two weeks, but had to talk to Chinese experts via a video link.
The team’s arrival was delayed for months by a diplomatic dispute that sparked a rare public outcry from the WHO chief.
This delay, and the ruling party’s secret orders to scientists not to speak publicly about the disease, have raised questions about whether Beijing could try to block discoveries that would harm its self-proclaimed leader in the antivirus battle.