Beijing: China has said it is now treating more than 1,000 people for COVID-19 as numbers of cases continue to surge in the country’s north. The National Health Commission said Friday 1,001 new COVID-19 cases have been detected and the patients are under care for the disease. The government said 26 of the patients were in serious condition, and that 144 total new cases had been recorded over the past 24 hours.
The province of Hebei accounted for 90 of the new cases, while Heilongjiang province further north reported 43 new cases. The government said nine cases were brought from outside China. It also said local transmissions occurred in the southern Guangxi region and the northern province of Shaanxi.
There have been no reports of hospital bed shortages. However, Hebei has begun constructing a new quarantine centre outside the provincial capital of Shijiazhuang in anticipation of the need to monitor more possible cases.
Shijiazhuang has accounted for the bulk of cases in the province since the New Year, and has been placed under virtual lockdown along with the cities of Xingtai and Langfang, a move largely confining more than 20 million people to their homes for coming days.
In all, China has reported 87,988 cases with 4,635 deaths since the outbreak happened in December 2019.
The spike in northern China comes as World Health Organization (WHO) experts prepare to collect data on the origin of the pandemic after arriving Thursday in the central city of Wuhan. It was in this city where coronavirus was first detected in late 2019.
The politically sensitive investigation takes place amid uncertainty about whether Beijing might try to prevent embarrassing discoveries. The visit of the WHO team was approved by President Xi Jinping’s government after months of diplomatic wrangling. The researchers are to be quarantined for 14 days. They will be working with Chinese experts via video conference while in quarantine.