China Cases Hit 7-Month High, Worst Outbreak Since Virus Emerged In Wuhan

Beijing, China: China’s coronavirus cases hit a seven-month high on Tuesday, after a cluster at a test site helped approach numbers because the Delta variant challenges Beijing’s grip on the pandemic.
State media has described the present outbreak — which has sparked local lockdowns, mass testing and travel restrictions — because the most severe since the virus emerged within the city center of Wuhan.

Authorities had brought domestic infections right 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 in recent days are linked to a Covid-19 testing site in eastern Yangzhou city.

In a sign of the anxiety over even relatively minor outbreaks, several officials are 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 city of about 4.6 million people has thus far conducted five rounds of widespread testing, collecting 1.6 million samples in an effort to kill the spread.

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

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

Authorities are now working to prop up confidence that the newest resurgence is controllable.

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