Science

#China virus cases rise as Delta variant challenges Beijing

#China virus cases rise as Delta variant challenges Beijing

Delta variant
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

China’s coronavirus cases hit a seven-month high on Tuesday, after a cluster at a test site drove up numbers as the Delta variant challenges Beijing’s grip on the pandemic.

State media has described the current outbreak—which has sparked local lockdowns, mass testing and travel restrictions—as the most severe since the virus emerged in the central city of Wuhan.

Authorities had brought domestic infections down to virtually zero, allowing economic activity to rebound albeit with tight border restrictions.

But now, cases are rising.

On Tuesday, Chinese health authorities reported 143 new coronavirus infections—108 of them locally transmitted.

Dozens of cases came from a COVID-19 testing site in eastern Yangzhou city.

In a sign of the anxiety over even relatively minor outbreaks, several officials have been issued warnings for mishandling mass testing, which city authorities said allowed the virus to spread.

Yangzhou city authorities said “a small number of party members and cadres have yet to perform their duties properly”.

The latest surge started after infections among airport cleaners in neighbouring Nanjing city sparked a chain of cases across the country.

Tuesday’s numbers are the highest since January, when the country logged 144 new cases and 126 domestic infections, mostly in the northern regions.

Authorities are now working to shore up confidence that the latest resurgence is controllable.

“We have successfully contained the epidemic in Guangzhou, and the epidemic in Nanjing is gradually being put under control,” the official Xinhua news agency cited infectious diseases specialist Zhang Wenhong as saying.


China’s Wuhan completes citywide COVID tests on 11 million residents


© 2021 AFP

Citation:
China virus cases rise as Delta variant challenges Beijing (2021, August 10)
retrieved 10 August 2021
from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-08-china-virus-cases-delta-variant.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on Google News too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.

For forums sites go to Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com

If you want to read more Like this articles, you can visit our Science category.

Source

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button
Close

Please allow ads on our site

Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker!