Alarm as China reports new cases in Wuhan

THE Chinese city where coronavirus began has reported its first cluster of cases for more than a month.

Five people in the same housing block in Wuhan tested positive for the disease, officials said yesterday.

They include the 89-year-old wife of a man who, on Sunday, became the first confirmed case in the city since April 3. Wuhan’s lockdown was lifted on April 8.

A further 11 people in the northern city of Shulan, near the Russian border, are also confirmed to have Covid-19.

The outbreaks have stoked fears of a resurgence of the disease in China, which last week declared that all regions were low-risk. Over the weekend, Shulan was upgraded to high-risk and a new lockdown was put in place.

Residents have been told to stay home and only one family member is allowed out each day to buy essential products. Public places have been temporarily shut and public transport suspended.

The latest cases had all been previously classified as asymptomatic – people who test positive for the virus and are capable of infecting others, but do not show clinical signs such as a fever.

Hundreds of asymptomatic cases in Wuhan are being monitored, according to the city’s health authority.

The number of new cases reported in China since April has been small compared with the thousands confirmed each day in February. But the country does not include asymptomatic cases in its overall tally of confirmed cases, which currently stands at 82,918. The death toll for mainland China is 4,633. But doubt has been cast on the numbers, with officials being accused of releasing bogus figures on infections and deaths.

Some citizens in Wuhan believe the real death toll may be 40 times higher than the official figure released by Beijing.

According to American intelligence and reports from Chinese dissidents on the ground, crematoria had been running for 24 hours a day, with 40,000 extra funeral urns taken to the city.

They also reported long queues at funeral parlours and rioting on the streets as citizens realised they were lied to.