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BEIJING: Concerns intensified in mainland China about a possible new wave of coronavirus cases ahead of Chinese New Year next month, as authorities reported 109 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday (January 17), the majority of them in Hebei province surrounding Beijing.
Although the new case count on January 16 was lower than the 130 the day before, China has seen the number of daily cases jump to a high of more than 10 months in the past week.
The disturbing trend has emerged as a team of researchers led by the World Health Organization (WHO) remained in quarantine in the city of Wuhan, where the disease was first detected in late 2019.The team aims to investigate the origins of the pandemic that now killed more than two million people worldwide.
Giving details of the latest number of daily cases, the National Health Commission (NHC) said 96 were local infections, 72 of them in Hebei, 12 in the northeast province of Heilongjiang, 10 in the northeast province of Jilin and two in Beijing. .
The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, rose to 119 on Saturday from 79 on Friday.
The numbers remain well below the levels seen at the peak of the outbreak in China in early 2020, but authorities remain on their guard and, as a result of the outbreak in recent weeks, a handful of cities have been locked down.
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NHC Minister Ma Xiaowei said on Saturday that the outbreaks in the northeast stem from travelers entering the country or imports of contaminated frozen food. China is the only country that claims that COVID-19 can be transmitted through cold chain imports, even though the WHO has downplayed the risks.
The city of Beijing will begin requiring foreign travelers to undergo health checks for an additional seven days after 21 days of medical observation, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday.
Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei and the place hardest hit by the latest surge in infections, reported 65 new confirmed cases of local transmission on January 16, the provincial health commission said.
Zhang Yan, a provincial health official in Jilin, told a press conference that the outbreak had been caused by infected people arriving in the province from Heilongjiang. Zhang said 102 recent infections were related to a person who had traveled between the two provinces several times for marketing activities targeting the elderly.
The total confirmed COVID-19 cases in mainland China stands at 88,227, while the death toll remains unchanged at 4,635.
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