Covid-19 testing daily as China fights latest epicentre on Russia border
- City of Manzhouli reports most of the country’s infections for a fifth successive day and begins sixth round of mass daily testing
- Harbin, in the northeast, and Yunnan, in the southwest, account for most of the other new symptomatic cases, while Beijing has one new case
The National Health Commission (NHC) on Friday reported 56 new local symptomatic cases in the city, in the northern Inner Mongolia autonomous region, making it the country’s largest source of daily local symptomatic cases for a fifth day in a row.
China reported 80 new local symptomatic cases in total, with 10 each in Heilongjiang – neighbouring Inner Mongolia – and the southwestern Yunnan province. Beijing, Shanghai and Shaanxi province also had isolated cases.
Ten asymptomatic cases from the community were reported, all from another border region: Longchuan county in Yunnan, bordering Myanmar. The NHC also reported 30 new imported cases, of which 16 were symptomatic.
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People line up in snow for Covid-19 testing amid outbreak in northern China border city
“We will strictly hold accountable individuals who have helped spread infections by evading or insisting on not taking nucleic acid tests or lying about having received them in accordance with the law,” the city’s anti-epidemic task force said in a notice on Thursday.
New infections in Manzhouli, many of them found in school pupils, continued to be linked to a local cinema and a technical middle school.
Covid-19 cases continued to spread elsewhere across China.
Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang, accounted for all 10 cases in the province. Ke Yunnan, party secretary of the city’s health commission, said on Friday that at least seven of them were close contacts of infected people in Manzhouli.
“Citizens should not leave Harbin unless absolutely necessary and should not travel to areas with infections,” he said, adding that a first round of mass testing in six districts was nearly complete.
Beijing’s sole daily case was a close contact of a case in Harbin, from where she had flown to the capital on Sunday, health authorities said.
The Beijing health commission said that it had collected nearly 5,000 samples from at-risk individuals as well as environmental samples, all of which tested negative. All of the woman’s 90 close contacts have been quarantined.
The 10 local symptomatic cases from Yunnan’s Longchuan county were found when testing patients at infectious disease clinics and people in quarantine. Local health authorities have not indicated whether the cases were related to the infections originating from Manzhouli.
