WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) – New Zealand has reported its first case of coronavirus outside a quarantine facility in more than two months, although there was no immediate evidence that the virus had spread to the community.
Health Director-General Ashley Bloomfield said on Sunday that the case was a 56-year-old woman who had recently returned from Europe.
Like other returning travelers, he spent 14 days in quarantine and tested negative twice before returning home on January 13th. He subsequently showed symptoms and tested positive.
He said health officials will perform genome tests, but are working on the assumption that the case is a more transmissible variant of the virus.
He said they are investigating to see if he may have caught the illness of another traveler returning and staying at the same quarantine facility.
New Zealand has eliminated community transmission of the virus, at least for now. Bloomfield said officials are stepping up efforts to track and test contacts and hope to have more information about the case in the coming days.
Elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region:
– A Chinese city has completed 2,600 temporary treatment rooms while the north of the country is battling new coronavirus groups. The single rooms in Nangong City, Hebei Province, on the outskirts of Beijing, are equipped with their own heaters, toilets, showers and other amenities, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Special attention has been paid to Hebei due to its proximity to the capital and the province has closed large areas to prevent further spread of the virus. The provincial capital Shijiazhung and the city of Xingtai, which encompasses Nangong, have been largely sealed. Community isolation and large-scale testing have also been applied. The National Health Commission reported 19 additional cases in Hebei on Sunday. The northeastern tip of Heilongjiang Province reported 29 more cases, partly related to an outbreak at a meat processing plant. Beijing, where nearly 2 million residents have been ordered to undergo new tests, reported two new confirmed cases. There are currently 1,800 people in China on COVID-19 treatment, 94 of them in serious condition, with 1,017 more monitored in isolation for testing positive for the virus without symptoms.
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