China records highest locally transmitted Covid-19 cases in 2 months
Beijing, Dec 27 (efe-epa).- China on Saturday detected 12 cases of Covid-19 that were transmitted locally, seven of them in the northeastern province of Liaoning and five in the capital Beijing, the National Health Commission reported, marking the largest transmission within its borders in two months.
The last time the country detected a similar number of local cases was on Oct. 28 when 23 coronavirus infections were recorded in the western province of Xinjiang.
Overall, a total of 22 fresh cases were detected across the country, including 10 from abroad, according to the Commission.
The so called imported cases were recorded Saturday in the cities of Shanghai (4) and Beijing (3), and the eastern provinces of Zhejiang (2) and Anhui (1).
Five cases were recorded on Saturday in the Shunyi residential district in northern Beijing, which led the authorities to isolate two areas of the district and to declare an epidemic emergency level on a “wartime” footing in the affected part of the capital.
The municipal health authorities plan to carry out more than 800,000 coronavirus tests among the inhabitants of Shunyi district.
Liaoning province is also facing a similar outbreak that was detected on Dec. 15 in the port city of Dalian, and which has led to almost five million tests carried out among its population.
The authorities reported that overall 16 patients were discharged and 571 people who had come into close contact with those infected were no longer under medical observation.
The total number of active cases from abroad stands at 270, three of them severe, among the 4,203 total imported cases recorded since the beginning of the pandemic, none of which have been fatal.
The total number of active cases across China have now risen to 334, four of them severe, out of the 86,955 total cases detected since December 2019, resulting in 4,634 deaths.
Some 900,952 people who came in close contact with the infected have been traced, of which 11,954 remain under observation.
As for asymptomatic patients, which China does not include under confirmed cases, 15 new cases were recorded – 11 of them from abroad.
A total 251 asymptomatic cases remain under observation, 206 of them imported. EFE-EPA
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