BEIJING – A northern Chinese city is building a 3,000-unit quarantine facility to deal with a projected overflow of patients as COVID-19 cases increase before the annual travel rush of the year new monthly.
State media on Friday showed teams leveling land, pouring concrete and assembling prefabricated rooms on farmland in a peripheral part of Shijiazhuang, the provincial capital of Hebei province, which has seen the bulk of new cases.
This was reminiscent of scenes from early last year, when China quickly built field hospitals and turned gyms into isolation centers to deal with a spiraling outbreak in Wuhan, where the virus spread. detected for the first time in late 2019.
The rise in northern China comes as a World Health Organization team prepares to collect data on the origin of the pandemic in Wuhan, which lies in the south. The international team, which arrived mostly on Thursday, must spend two weeks in quarantine before field visits begin.
Two of the 15 members were arrested in Singapore for their health condition. One, of British nationality, was approved to travel on Friday after testing negative for coronavirus, while the second, a Sudanese citizen from Qatar, tested positive again, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said.
China has largely contained the internal spread of the virus, but the recent rise has raised concerns about the proximity to the capital, Beijing, and the impending rush of people planning to travel long distances to join their families during the most important traditional Lunar New Year holiday.
The National Health Commission said Friday that 1,001 patients were being cared for by the disease, 26 in serious condition. It was said that 144 new cases were registered in the last 24 hours. Hebei accounted for 90 of the new cases, while Heilongjiang Province, further north, reported 43.
Local transmissions also occurred in the southern region of Guangxi and northern Shaanxi Province, illustrating the virus’s ability to move through the vast country of 1.4 billion people despite quarantine, travel restrictions and electronic surveillance. .
To date, China has reported 87,988 confirmed cases with 4,635 deaths.
Shijiazhuang has been located under virtual enclosure, along with the cities of Xingtai and Langfang in Hebei, parts of Beijing and other northeastern cities. This has cut off travel routes, while more than 20 million people have been told to stay home for the next few days.
China is moving forward with inoculations using vaccines developed by China, with more than 9 million people already vaccinated and is expected to have 50 million shot in the middle of next month.
About 4,000 doses are delivered daily to the Chaoyang Planning Art Museum, one of more than 240 sites in Beijing, where the first of two doses was being given on Friday to high-risk groups, including medical, delivery and transport.
The vaccine, produced by a Beijing subsidiary of state-owned Sinopharm, is the first to be approved for general use in China.
“Vaccinating me is not only about protecting myself, but also protecting the people around me,” Ding Jianguang, a social worker who received her first shot earlier this month, told foreign journalists.
Former World Health Organization official Keiji Fukuda, who is not part of the Wuhan team, warned of expectations of any progress in the visit, saying it could be years before conclusions could be reached. firm about the origin of the virus.
“China will want to avoid guilt, perhaps by changing the narrative. They want them to be competent and transparent, “he told The Associated Press in a video interview from Hong Kong.
For its part, the WHO wants to project the image that “it takes, exercises leadership, takes and does things in a timely manner,” he said.
Scientists suspect the virus has killed more than 1.9 million people worldwide since it jumped humans from bats or other animals in late 2019, possibly in southwest China.
China approved the World Health Organization visit only after months of diplomatic disputes that sparked an unusual public complaint by the WHO chief.
The delay, along with the Communist Party’s tight control over information and the promotion of theories that the pandemic began elsewhere, added to speculation that China seeks to prevent discoveries that chisel its self-proclaimed state of leader in the battle against the virus. .
In Wuhan, street life seemed little different from other Chinese cities where the virus has been largely controlled. Seniors gathered for a drink and dance at a riverside park on Friday and residents were generally praised for the government’s response to the crisis.
In other countries, “people go out arbitrarily, stay and gather, so they find it especially easy to get infected,” Xiang Nan said. “I hope they can stay home and reduce travel. … Don’t let the pandemic spread any further. “
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Associated Press journalists Sam McNeil and Ng Han Guan in Wuhan, China, and video producer Olivia Zhang in Beijing contributed to this report.