BEIJING (AP) – China sees new increase in coronavirus cases in its frozen northeast as World Health Organization the team arrived to investigate the origins of the pandemic.
China also reported on Thursday its first new death attributed to COVID-19 in recent months, raising the level to 4,635 out of 87,844 cases. The relatively low numbers of cases in China are a testament to the effectiveness of strict containment, prosecution and quarantine measures, but they also raised questions about the government’s close control over all information related to the outbreak.
The National Health Commission said Heilongjiang Province in the region traditionally known as Manchuria has registered 43 new cases, most of them centered on the city of Suihua outside the capital of Harbin Province. The northern province of Hebei, just outside Beijing, which has seen the worst outbreak in China recently, has recorded another 81 cases, marking the second consecutive day the total number of local infections in China has risen by three figures. Another 14 cases were brought from abroad.
China has placed more than 20 million people under varying degrees of blockade in Hebei, Beijing and other areas, hoping to prevent infections before next month’s New Year’s holiday. The government has cut travel links to and from several cities, urged people to stay on holiday, postponed major political rallies and plans to let schools out a week earlier to reduce the chances of infection.
Also on Thursday, a 10-member WHO team arrived in central Wuhan, where the virus was first detected in late 2019. The visit was approved by President Xi Jinping’s government after months of diplomatic fighting that led to a public complaint. unusual of the head of WHO.
The state broadcaster CGTN said that the team will be quarantined for two weeks and will be tested for the virus.
Scientists suspect that the virus that killed 1.9 million people at the end of 2019 jumped to humans from bats or other animals, most likely in southwest China.
The WHO team includes viruses and other experts from the United States, Australia, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, Russia, the Netherlands, Qatar and Vietnam.
In other developments in the Asia-Pacific region:
– Indonesia began vaccinating health workers and civil servants with the COVID-19 vaccine from Chinese drug manufacturer Sinovac Biotech. The Ministry of Health intends to vaccinate more than 1.3 million health workers and 17.4 million civil servants in the first phase of its vaccination program, which is ultimately intended to cover two-thirds of its population, or 180 millions of the 270 million people. The first 25 health workers to receive jab were employees of Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital in Jakarta. The launch comes at a time when Indonesia has experienced a daily high level of COVID-19 infections and deaths, with 11,278 cases and 306 deaths in the last 24 hours. The country has confirmed 858,000 infections and 24,900 deaths since the pandemic began.