By Brenda Goh and Steven Bian
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s recent COVID-19 outbreaks in the northeast are coming from travelers entering the country or contaminating frozen food imports, the National Health Commission (NHC) said on Saturday.
NHC Minister Ma Xiaowei made the remarks at a government meeting, where he also said that the virus had spread to rural areas and that dealing with the recent situation had exposed the way prevention and control measures had been relaxed.
“Since December 2020, epidemic clusters have been occurring in Beijing, Sichuan, Liaoning, Hebei and Heilongjiang,” reads a statement posted on the NHC’s website, referring to Ma’s briefing.
“They mainly have the following characteristics. First, they are all imported from abroad, caused by travelers from overseas, or contaminated imported articles with cold chains.”
The total case numbers remain well below what China saw at the peak of the outbreak in early 2020, but concerns about a new wave increase with the new lunar year a month further.
This boom comes as a team of researchers led by the World Health Organization (WHO) is quarantined in the city of Wuhan, where the disease was only noticed in late 2019. The team aims to investigate the origins of the pandemic that has now nearly killed. 2 million people worldwide.
China is the only country to claim that COVID-19 can be transmitted through the importation of cold chains, although the WHO has downplayed the risks and told a story via state media that the virus exists abroad before it enters late last year in the central city of Wuhan.
The country has seen its number of daily cases rise to a peak of more than ten months in the past week, and on January 15, 130 new cases of coronavirus were reported on the continent, up from 144 cases a day earlier.
Of the cases, 115 were local infections, 90 of which were the worst hit in the Hebei Province around Beijing in the latest wave.
Another 23 cases were found in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, while two cases were reported in Beijing. Authorities also reported that 79 new asymptomatic patients, who do not classify it as confirmed cases, were found on January 15, compared to 66 a day earlier.
About 28 million people have been locked up as a result so far and Ma said the latest outbreak has spread rapidly due to activities such as wedding parties or large group gatherings, and that it has been difficult to control as the transfer of the community has already taken place then cases were discovered.
However, Xinhua warned on Saturday that government officials should not “cry wolf” and be too quick to declare that they are entering “wartime” ， saying it could increase unnecessary panic and affect normal production.
The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases on mainland China now stands at 88,118, while the death toll remains unchanged at 4,635.
(Edited by Cynthia Osterman and Jacqueline Wong)