Beijing: China raced on Saturday to hold the worst Coronavirus outbreak in several months, because health officials blamed the Delta variant which was very contagious for a surge in infection which included 14 provinces.
China reported 328 symptomatic infections in July – almost the same as the total local case from February to June.
“The main types that circulate today are Delta variants …
which raises a greater challenge for viral prevention and control work,” Mi Feng, spokesman for the National Health Commission (NHC), said to the press direction.
This outbreak is geographically the largest to hit China in a few months, challenging the initial success of the country in finishing the pandemic on its border after Covid-19 seeped from Wuhan.
But the record was thrown into danger after the Delta variant which spread quickly broke at Nanjing Airport in East Jiangsu Province earlier this month.
More than 260 national infections have been associated with clusters in Nanjing, where nine cabin cleaners at international airports were tested positively on July 20.
Hundreds of thousands have been locked in Jiangsu Province, while Nanjing has tested all 9.2 million people twice.
Infectious Delta variants combined with top tourist seasons and high passenger circulation at the airport has caused the rapid spread of this outbreak, officials of NHC He Qinghua told reporters on the briefing.
New cases reported on Saturday in two other regions – Fujian province and spacious Chongqing Megacity – including one patient who visited the Xi’an tourist city, Shaanxi Province, and international cargo crew members who recently traveled from abroad , said the authority.
, Officials in one Chongqing district ordered emergency mass testing at the end of Friday for people who had visited the venue related to confirmed cases.
After an asimptomatic case found in Zhengzhou – a recent deadly flood center in the Central Henan Province – City officials on Saturday ordered mass testing from all 10 million residents.
The head of the city health commission was also fired.
The tourist city of Zhangjiajie in Hunan Province, where the landscape inspired Blockbuster “Avatar”, locked all 1.5 million residents and close all tourist attractions on Friday, according to official notice.
Health officials said the virus was likely to be brought there through the Nanjing cluster, according to the initial investigation.
Officials are now scrambling to track national people who have recently traveled from Nanjing or Zhangjiajie, and have urged tourists not to travel to the areas found.
After reporting that some people who were fed up in the latest clusters were vaccinated, health officials said this was “normal” and emphasized the importance of vaccination in addition to strict steps.
“Covid vaccine protection against Delta variants may decrease somewhat, but the current vaccine still has a good preventive effect and protection against the Delta variant,” said Feng Zijian, Virology at the control center and prevention of Chinese diseases.
More than 1.6 billion doses of vaccines so far have been given nationally on Friday, NHC said.
It does not give numbers on how many people have been fully vaccinated.
Health officials said they aimed 80 percent of the population to fully vaccinate the end of the year.