BEIJING (AP) – A city in northern China is building a 3,000-unit quarantine facility to deal with an anticipated outflow of patients as COVID-19 cases rise before the Lunar New Year’s travel race.
State media on Friday showed crews leveling the ground, pouring concrete and assembling prefabricated rooms on agricultural land outside Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province, which saw most of the new cases.
This was reminiscent of scenes last year, when China quickly built field hospitals and turned gymnasiums into isolation centers to deal with the original outbreak of the central city of Wuhan.
China has largely contained the domestic spread of coronavirus, but the recent peak has raised concerns about the proximity of the capital Beijing and the impending rush of people planning to travel long distances to join their families for the country’s most important traditional festival. .
The National Health Commission said on Friday that 1,001 patients were being treated for the disease, of which 26 were in serious condition. He said 144 new cases had been registered in the last 24 hours. Hebei accounted for 90 new cases, while northern Heilongjiang Province reported 43.
Nine cases were brought out of the country, while local transmissions also took place in the southern Guangxi region and the northern province of Shaanxi, illustrating the virus’s ability to travel through the vast country of 1.4 billion people, despite quarantine, travel restrictions and electronic monitoring.
Shijiazhuang was placed under virtual blockade, along with the cities of Hebei Xingtai and Langfang, parts of Beijing and other cities in the northeast. This disrupted travel routes, while more than 20 million people were told to stay home for the next few days.
In total, China reported 87,988 confirmed cases, with 4,635 deaths.
Growth in northern China comes as World Health Organization experts prepare to collect data on the origin of the pandemic after arriving in Wuhan on Thursday, where the coronavirus was first detected in late 2019. Team members must undergo two weeks of treatment. quarantine before you can start field visits.
Two of the 15 members were detained in Singapore for their health. One of them, a British citizen, was approved for the trip on Friday after giving negative results for coronavirus, while the second, a Sudanese citizen from Qatar, gave a positive test again, the Foreign Ministry announced.
The visit was approved by the government of President Xi Jinping after months of diplomatic fighting that led to an unusual public complaint by the WHO chief.
This delay, along with Beijing’s tight scrutiny of information and the promotion of theories that the pandemic began elsewhere, added to speculation that China is trying to prevent the findings that undermine its status as a self-proclaimed leader in fighting the virus.
Scientists suspect that the virus that killed more than 1.9 million people by the end of 2019 has 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 against raising expectations for any findings from the visit, saying it could take years for firm conclusions to be drawn.
“China will want to get out of its guilt, maybe changing the narrative, they want to be competent and transparent,” he told The Associated Press in an interview in Hong Kong.
For its part, the WHO wants to project the image that “it takes over, exercises leadership, takes over and does things in a timely manner,” Fukuda said.
In Wuhan, street life appeared a little different from other Chinese cities where the virus was largely controlled.
In a park by the river, the elderly gathered to drink and dance, while residents generally received praise for the government’s response to the crisis.
“Other countries are not very supportive and do not pay attention to the pandemic, people go out arbitrarily and sit together and gather together, so it is particularly easy for them to be infected,” said resident Xiang Nan. “I hope I can stay home and reduce travel … don’t let the pandemic spread.”
China is also advancing vaccinations using home-grown vaccines, with more than 9 million already vaccinated, and plans to have 50 million shot by the middle of next month.
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Associated Press journalist Emily Wang contributed to the report.