China cases fall, but Hong Kong on the up

New locally transmitted cases of coronavirus reported in China have fallen into the single digits, but Hong Kong is seeing another rise in hospitalisations and deaths.

China’s National Health Commission said eight new cases were registered in the past 24 hours in the north-western region of Xinjiang, whose main city of Urumqi has enacted lockdown measures and travel restrictions to control China’s latest outbreak. An extra 11 cases were brought by Chinese returning from overseas.

Hong Kong, meanwhile, has 62 new cases, up from 33 on Wednesday, along with an additional five deaths. The semi-autonomous southern Chinese city has required masks to be worn in all public settings and limited indoor dining among other measures to curb a new outbreak. South Korea has separately reported 56 newly confirmed cases of coronavirus as new infection clusters continue to pop up. The figures brought the national case load to 14,770 infections.