BEIJING (AP) – A city in northern China is building a 3,000-unit quarantine facility to accommodate an expected overflow of patients as COVID-19 cases occur ahead of the Lunar New Year’s travel rush.
State media on Friday showed crews leveling earth, pouring concrete and assembling prefabricated rooms on farmland outside Shijiazhuang, the provincial capital of Hebei province, where the majority of new cases have fallen.
That was a reminder of scenes last year when China quickly built field hospitals and turned gymnasiums into isolation centers to deal with the first outbreak linked to the central city of Wuhan.
China has largely curtailed the further domestic spread of the coronavirus, but the recent spike has raised concerns over its proximity to the capital Beijing and the impending crowds of people planning to travel long distances to rejoin their families to join for the country’s most important traditional festival.
The National Health Commission said Friday that 1,001 patients were being treated for the disease, 26 of them in severe condition. It said 144 new cases have been recorded in the last 24 hours. Hebei was responsible for 90 of the new cases, while Heilongjiang Province reported 43 further north.
Nine cases were brought from outside the country, while local transmissions also took place in the southern region of Guangxi and the northern province of Shaanxi, showing that the virus can travel across the vast land of 1.4 billion people despite quarantines, travel restrictions and electronic monitoring .
Shijiazhuang is virtually closed off, along with the Hebei cities of Xingtai and Langfang, parts of Beijing and other cities in the northeast. That has cut off travel routes, while more than 20 million people have been told to stay at home for the next few days.
In total, China has reported 87,988 confirmed cases with 4,635 deaths.
The spike in North China comes as experts from the World Health Organization prepare to collect data on the origins of the pandemic after arriving Thursday in Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first discovered in late 2019. Team members must undergo quarantine for two weeks before they can start fieldwork. attend.
Two of the 15 members were detained in Singapore due to their health. One of them, a British citizen, was approved for travel on Friday after testing negative for the coronavirus, while the second, a Sudanese citizen from Qatar, tested positive again, the State Department announced.
The visit was approved by President Xi Jinping’s government after months of diplomatic bickering that led to an unusual public complaint from the WHO head.
That delay, along with Beijing’s tight control of information and promotion of theories that started the pandemic elsewhere, added to speculation that China is trying to stave off discoveries that languish its self-proclaimed status as a leader in the fight against the virus.
Scientists suspect that the virus, which has killed more than 1.9 million people since late 2019, jumped on humans by bats or other animals, most likely in southwest China.
Former WHO official Keiji Fukuda, who is not on the team, warned of raising expectations for breakthroughs from the visit, saying it could be years before definitive conclusions can be drawn.
“China will want to come out to avoid the blame, perhaps by shifting the story, they want to appear competent and transparent,” he told The Associated Press in an interview from Hong Kong.
The WHO, for its part, wants to project the image that it “takes, exercises leadership, takes things on time and does,” Fukuda said.
Street life in Wuhan seemed little different than in other Chinese cities where the virus has largely been brought under control.
In a riverside park, seniors gathered to drink and dance, while residents generally praised the government’s response to the crisis.
“Other countries are not very supportive and not paying attention to the pandemic, people randomly go out, and they hang around and gather, so it’s especially easy for them to get infected,” said resident Xiang Nan. “I hope they can stay at home and reduce travel … don’t let the pandemic spread further.”
China is also continuing inoculations with proprietary vaccines, with more than 9 million already vaccinated and plans for 50 million to be injected by the middle of next month.
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Associated Press journalist Emily Wang contributed to this report.