Chinese city quarantines 8K over new coronavirus cluster
Shulan is under ‘wartime control mode‘ after an infected laundrywoman spread it to 11 others
least 8,000 residents of a city in northeastern China have been quarantined after cluster infections of Covid-19 mushroomed in residential communities over the past one 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 media 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 a total of 121 locally transmitted confirmed cases, including a death and 92 who had been discharged from hospital after recovery, Xinhua reported.
The number of confirmed cases in the mainland stands at 82,941 and the death toll at 4,633.
Meanwhile, residents of Wuhan, where the virus emerged late last year, continued to line up for mass testing on Saturday amid fears that exposure to crowded testing sites could trigger infections. City authorities said all Wuhan residents will be tested for the virus after cluster infections emerged for the first time since April 8 when the 76-day lockdown of the city 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.
“But others rebutted those worries, saying such comments are not supportive of the government.”
The Reuters report said many people queuing up in the lines observed social distancing – with signs reminding them to do so – but just as many did not.
Many people observed social distancing, such as queuing one metre apart, and there were signs to remind them.
But just as many did not. In some cases, volunteer workers were not insisting that they comply.