8k quarantined in China’s Shulan city

BEIJING:At least 8,000 residents of a Chinese city have been quarantined after cluster cases of Covid-19 mushroomed in residential communities over the past week, state media reported.

Shulan, a city in China’s Jilin province, is under “wartime control mode” after an infected laundrywoman spread the coronavirus to 11 others. Local authorities raised the epidemic risk level from low to medium on Friday.

According to reports, four confirmed cases in Jilin city, under the jurisdiction of which Shulan falls, visited “public places such as supermarkets and restaurants and one has done cleaning work in seven places”.

By Friday, the province reported 121 locally transmitted confirmed cases, including one death and 92 who had been discharged from hospital after recovery, Xinhua reported. The country has so far reported 82,941 cases and 4,633 deaths.

Meanwhile, residents of Wuhan, where the virus emerged late last year, continued to line up for mass testing amid fears that exposure to crowded testing sites could trigger cases. Authorities said all Wuhan residents will be tested after cluster cases emerged for the first time since April 8 when the lockdown was lifted.

“Some people have expressed worry in (social media) groups about the tests, which require people to cluster, and whether there’s any infection risk,” a resident who asked not to be named told Reuters in Wuhan.