WELLINGTON, New Zealand (PA) – 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 was spreading in the community.
Health Director-General Ashley Bloomfield said on Sunday that it 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 home on January 13th. He later developed symptoms and tested positive.
He said health officials would perform genome tests, but were working on the hypothesis that the case was a more transmissible variant of the virus.
He said he is investigating to see if she may have caught the disease from another passenger returning and in the same quarantine unit.
New Zealand has eliminated Community transmission of the virus, at least for the time being. 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 fighting new coronavirus groups. The single-person rooms in Nangong City, Hebei Province, just outside Beijing, are each equipped with their own heaters, toilets, showers and other facilities, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Special attention was paid to Hebei due to its proximity to the capital, and the province blocked large areas to prevent the further spread of the virus. The capital of Shijiazhung Province and Xingtai City, which includes Nangong, have been largely sealed. Community isolation and large-scale testing were also applied. The National Health Commission reported 19 additional cases in Hebei on Sunday. Northeast Heilongjiang Province reported another 29 cases, partly related to an outbreak at a meat processing plant. Beijing, where about 2 million people have been ordered to undergo new tests, has reported two new confirmed cases. China currently has 1,800 people being treated for COVID-19, of whom 94 are listed as serious, with another 1,017 being monitored in isolation because they tested positive for the virus without symptoms.
___
Follow all the AP pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic, https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak