Mainland China had 13 new infections on Tuesday, the National Health
Commission said, down from 21 a day earlier. A dozen of the new
cases involved infected arrivals from abroad.
In contrast to the wave of imported cases, mainland China had just
one domestic transmission on Tuesday in Wuhan, the capital of the
central province of Hubei, where the flu-like disease emerged late
last year.
The capital Beijing accounted for three of the imported new cases,
down from nine the day before, while the commercial hub of Shanghai
had three, matching the figure of the day before.
By noon on Wednesday, Beijing reported a further 11 imported cases,
the majority involving travellers from Spain and Britain, with one
from Brazil.
Imported cases in the southern province of Guangdong rose to five
from three on Tuesday, involving arrivals from Britain, the
Netherlands and Thailand. One infection emerged in southwestern
Sichuan for the first time.
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The tally of imported cases in mainland China was 155 by Tuesday, up
12 from a day earlier. That takes the total infections in mainland
China to 80,894, the health authority said in a statement on
Wednesday.
Though imported cases are on the rise, the risk of local
transmission remains, with some patients showing few symptoms and
travelling undetected for days.
A 30-year-old policeman from the central province of Henan flew back
to Beijing this month following a week-long trip to Italy, and then
took a train to the provincial capital of Zhengzhou.
He was not diagnosed until March 11, after several days at work. At
least 11 cities in China have traced locals exposed to him during
his journey.
By the end of Tuesday, mainland China's death toll from the virus
stood at 3,237, up 11 from the previous day.
Hubei recorded 11 new deaths, with Wuhan, the epicentre of the
outbreak, accounting for 10.
As domestic infections ebb, and cities widen quarantine rules for
travellers from more countries, students are rushing to get home.
[L4N2BA1HB]
They included Wang Zihang, a student in his final year of high
school in France, who said he preferred quarantine in China to
staying in Europe. "I was afraid there," Wang added.
However, international students should not return to China if they
do not have to, Pang Xinghuo, an official of the Beijing Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, told a news briefing in the capital.
A senior medical adviser to the government, Zhong Nanshan, cautioned
that imported cases were highly infectious, and urged checks on
arrivals from countries with large outbreaks, instead of observing
symptoms.
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He called for tougher global measures to tackle the virus, beyond checks on
people with symptoms.
"Although some places in other countries have sealed off the city, there are
still gatherings for meals or coffees in the city," Zhong told a news
conference. "This is not OK."
WUHAN
While the rest of Hubei had no new infections for almost two weeks, Wuhan
reported new infections through outpatient diagnosis for a fifth day, a worrying
sign of continued local transmissions, despite nearly two months of tough social
distancing and quarantine measures.
"The new infected patients and their family members have gone out and about in
their local community during this period of staying at home," the Wuhan
coronavirus task force told some residents in a text message late on Tuesday,
warning against the risk of community infection.
Wuhan health authorities said Tuesday's new case, diagnosed at a fever clinic,
involved a manager at a vegetable market.
Fever clinics in Wuhan received 630 patients in the 24 hours until 6 p.m. on
Tuesday, up 32 from the previous period, the official Xinhua news agency said.
"What we are most worried about is that there is an undetected source of the
coronavirus," the ruling Communist Party's People's Daily cited a Wuhan-based
doctor as saying.
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Wuhan remains Hubei's only city still designated as "high-risk" and subject to
strict travel bans, as authorities are keen for other parts of the province to
return to work.
Starbucks Corp. has reopened a store each in Hubei's cities of Jingzhou and
Shiyan, it said on Wednesday, after closing all outlets in the province for
nearly two months during the lockdown.
Hubei has also tightened quarantine measures for overseas arrivals, moving them
to a central facility for 14 days even in the absence of an apparent infection
risk, state media said.
(Reporting by Ryan Woo, Yawen Chen, Huizhong Wu, Se Young Lee, Sophie Yu,
Roxanne Liu, Zhang Min, Dominique Patton and David Stanway; Editing by Michael
Perry and Clarence Fernandez)
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