Second wave? New cases in Wuhan, South Korea
Pandemic’s first epicentre reports five fresh cases on Monday
BEIJING/SEOUL: New clusters of infection of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) were reported from China — the pandemic’s first epicentre Wuhan and in the northeastern Jilin province — and South Korea in the past 24 hours, raising worries about a second wave of infections in countries that were thought to have fought off the worst of the disease.
The two countries had been gradually inching towards normalcy with the governments easing restrictions and reopening schools and businesses in recent weeks.
The city of Wuhan in
China’s Hubei province reported five new cases on Monday, a day after it confirmed the first Covid-19 case since early April. The local government said the six locally transmitted asymptomatic cases were found in the
Sanmin neighbourhood — the first cluster to emerge in Wuhan since the end of a strict lockdown on April 8.
The government raised the emergency response level in the neighbourhood from low to medium and nearly 5,000 residents were expected to get screened in the next few days.
In South Korea, lauded for its quick, effective action on its epidemic, officials scrambled on Monday searching for thousands of people who may have been infected in a cluster of cases linked to nightclubs and bars in the capital Seoul.
Officials reported 35 new cases on Sunday.
BEIJING/WASHINGTON: New cluster infections of Covid-19 have been reported from the pandemic’s first epicentre, the city of Wuhan, and the northeastern province of Jilin in the past 24 hours, China’s national health commission (NHC) said on Monday.
The new coronavirus cases have triggered fears of a likely second wave of infections in China, which has been gradually easing towards normalcy with risk levels downgraded across the country in recent weeks.
Wuhan in Hubei province reported five new cases on Monday, a day after it confirmed its first Covid-19 infection since the first week of April. Since Sunday, Wuhan has reported six new cases of the disease, all of which are from the same local community, Sanmin neighbourhood in the Dongxihu district of Wuhan, Global Times reported.
The NHC said on Monday that it had received reports of 17 new confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland on Sunday. China until Monday reported nearly 83,000 cases of Covid-19 and 4,633 deaths.
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