China on Sunday, July 28, confined an estimated 1.5 million people in an area close to the capital, Beijing, hit by a new outbreak of covid-19 infections, which the authorities still describe as “serious and complex”.
The country had managed to contain the evolution of contagions due to the new coronavirus, but the detection of more than 300 new cases in the city in just over two weeks has fueled fears of a second wave of contamination.
Local authorities have meanwhile launched a vast testing campaign, closed schools, asked Beijing residents to stay in the city, avoiding displacement outside the capital, and confined several thousand people to residential areas considered to be at greatest risk of contagion.
Today, according to the agency France-Presse, the local authorities announced the confinement of the canton of Anxin, located about 60 kilometers south of the capital, in the province of Hebei, where eleven cases were detected related to the outbreak in Beijing.
The indications are that only one person per family will be able to go out once a day to buy food or medicine.
The Health Ministry said today that China had diagnosed 17 new cases of covid-19 in the past 24 hours, including 14 in Beijing.
All cases in Beijing are locally contagious. The remaining three are from abroad and have been diagnosed in different parts of the country.
The China Health Commission has reported no new deaths across the country.
The number of active cases was set at 415, including eight in serious condition.
According to official data, since the beginning of the pandemic, China has registered 83,500 infected and 4,634 dead due to covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2).
The covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than 498,000 deaths and infected more than 10 million people in 196 countries and territories, according to a report by the French agency AFP.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December in Wuhan, a city in central China.
–
– .
