On January 12, 2021, a medical worker collected a sample of a swab from a child at a community testing site in Covid-19, Qiaoxi District, Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei Province, north of China. .
Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images
BEIJING – Mainland China on Thursday reported the first new death of Covid-19 since May as authorities try to control a rebound in cases just outside Beijing.
A woman from Hebei province died on Wednesday afternoon, state media reported, noting that her illness was a serious case and that she had pre-existing health conditions.
The province surrounds Beijing and began reporting a rapid increase in coronavirus cases earlier this month. In less than two weeks, authorities have shut down Shijiazhuang and other parts of Hebei Province in an effort to prevent the disease from spreading.
Hebei reported 81 new coronavirus cases as of Wednesday, bringing the current number of cases to 463. The northernmost province of Heilongjiang reported 43 new confirmed cases on Wednesday.
The National Health Commission recorded Wednesday’s death in its daily report on the local situation of the coronavirus, the first addition to the global total since May 2020.
This brought the total number of coronavirus deaths in mainland China to 4,365 people. The first death reported by Covid-19 was on January 11, 2020 in Wuhan City, where the disease first appeared in late 2019.
A World Health Organization team arrived in Wuhan on Thursday to investigate the origins of the virus alongside Chinese scientists, according to state media.
The Chinese government has rejected the implications that Covid-19 came from China. Following the outbreak in the country earlier last year, authorities attributed subsequent cases to foreign sources.