BEIJING (AP) – 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 ahead of the country’s travel race. lunar new year.
State media on Friday showed equipment leveling ground, pouring concrete and assembling prefabricated rooms on farmland outside Shijiazhuang, the provincial capital of Hebei province that has seen most new cases.
This was reminiscent of scenes last year, when China quickly built field hospitals and turned gyms into isolation centers to deal with the initial outbreak related to Wuhan’s central city.
China has largely contained the internal spread of coronavirus, but the recent rise has raised concerns about the proximity to the capital Beijing and the imminent rush of people planning to travel long distances to join their families to celebrate. the most important traditional festival in the country.
The National Health Commission said Friday that 1,001 patients were being treated for the disease, 26 of them 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.
Nine cases were brought from outside the country, while local transmissions also occurred in the southern region of Guangxi and the northern province of Shaanxi, illustrating the virus’s ability to move through the immense country of 1,400. millions of people despite quarantine, travel restrictions and electronic control.
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.
In total, China has reported 87,988 confirmed cases with 4,635 deaths.
The rise in northern China comes as World Health Organization experts prepare to gather data on the source of the pandemic after arriving in Wuhan on Thursday, where the coronavirus was first detected late. of 2019. Team members must spend two weeks in quarantine before starting field visits.
Two of the 15 members were arrested in Singapore for their health condition. One of them, a British national, was approved to travel on Friday after testing negative for coronavirus, while the second, a Sudanese citizen from Qatar, had tested positive again, the Foreign Ministry announced.
The visit was approved by President Xi Jinping’s government after months of diplomatic disputes that sparked an unusual public complaint by the WHO chief.
This delay, coupled with Beijing’s tight control of 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 leadership. in the battle against the virus.
Scientists suspect the virus, which has killed more than 1.9 million people since late 2019, jumped to humans from bats or other animals, most likely in southwest China.
Former WHO official Keiji Fukuda, who is not part of the team, warned that it would not raise expectations of the progress of the visit and said it could be years before firm conclusions could be reached.
“China will want to come out avoiding guilt, maybe changing the narrative, they want them to be competent and transparent,” he told The Associated Press in an 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,” Fukuda said.
In Wuhan, street life seemed little different from other Chinese cities where the virus has been largely controlled.
In a park by the river, seniors gathered for drinks and dancing, while residents were generally praised for the government’s response to the crisis.
“Other countries don’t give much support and don’t pay attention to the pandemic, people go out arbitrarily, stay and gather, so they find it especially easy to get infected,” resident Xiang Nan said. “I hope they can stay home and reduce travel … don’t let the pandemic spread any further.”
China is also moving forward with inoculations using home-developed vaccines, with more than 9 million already vaccinated and is expected to reach 50 million by the middle of next month.
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Associated Press journalist Emily Wang contributed to this report.