WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) – New Zealand 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 in the community.
Health Director-General Ashley Bloomfield said on Sunday the case was a 56-year-old woman who had recently returned from Europe.
Like other returning travelers, she spent 14 days in quarantine and tested negative twice before returning on January 13th. She later developed symptoms and tested positive.
He said health officials would do genome tests, but work on the assumption that the case is a more transmissible variant of the virus.
He said they are investigating whether it is possible that she contracted the disease through another returning traveler who stayed in the same quarantine facility.
New Zealand has eliminated the transmission of the virus through the community, at least for now. According to Bloomfield, officials are in the process of detecting and testing contact attempts and hope they will have more information on the matter in the coming days.
Elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific Region:
A Chinese city has completed 2,600 temporary treatment facilities as the country battles new coronavirus clusters in the north. The official Xinhua News Agency has equipped the single-room rooms in the city of Nangong in Hebei Province just outside Beijing with their own heaters, toilets, showers and other amenities. Special attention was given to Hebei due to its proximity to the capital and the province closed off large areas to prevent further spread of the virus. The provincial capital Shijiazhung and the city of Xingtai, which includes Nangong, are largely sealed. Community isolation and large-scale testing were also applied. The National Health Commission on Sunday reported 19 additional cases in Hebei. The far northeastern province of Heilongjiang reported another 29 cases, partly linked to an outbreak at a meat processing plant. Beijing, where about 2 million residents have been ordered to undergo new tests, reported two newly confirmed cases. In China, 1,800 people are currently being treated for COVID-19, of which 94 are listed in serious condition, while another 1,017 are being monitored in isolation because they tested positive for the virus without showing symptoms.
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