A new wave of the outbreak is still developing in China, and tensions are rising rapidly against the epidemic, especially in Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province, where all kinds of traffic have been blocked and people are prohibited from entering and leaving the city since Thursday (Jan. 7).
The Hebei Provincial health Commission reported on Thursday that 51 new local confirmed cases of newly crowned pneumonia were reported in Hebei province from 00-24 hours on Jan. 6, of which Shijiazhuang reported 50 cases (two cases were asymptomatic infections turned into confirmed cases); Shijiazhuang accounted for 67 of the 69 new local asymptomatic infections.
The city of 11 million people declared a “state of war” for the outbreak on Tuesday. Its roads, railroads and flights have been completely shut down. Transport to and from the city has been advised to return.
Shijiazhuang’s Gaocheng district, which is under Shijiazhuang’s jurisdiction, was closed to traffic on Jan. 6. The Gaocheng district is the focus of the outbreak in Shijiazhuang. Three officials in the district have been held accountable for their failure to prevent and control the outbreak.
The activity trajectory of 19 of the new local cases announced in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, showed that some of the infected people had attended numerous gatherings such as wedding banquets.
Ma Xiaowei, director of China’s National Health Commission, said on Jan. 6 that the epidemic is still developing and the situation is very serious. And many places in Hebei province have issued initiatives asking people outside the country not to return home for the Lunar New Year and to spend the New Year in place. Beijing and other cities around Hebei have been implementing measures such as restricting the arrival of people from Shijiazhuang.
However, Yang Zhanqiu, a professor at the Institute of Virology at Wuhan University’s Faculty of Medicine, said in a media interview that whether the movement of people should be controlled during the Lunar New Year depends on the situation of the epidemic from now until around the end of January, and also on whether the current trend of increasing epidemic cases around the region can be controlled.
As northern mainland China enters the cold winter period, some media quoted Kim Dong-Yan, a virus expert from the University of Hong Kong, as saying that the severe winter indoor closed situation is more likely to cause super-spread of the epidemic. According to him, superspread is the main feature of the new coronavirus, with 10% to 20% of the population being particularly contagious.
Due to the increase in local cases, Beijing Shunyi, Liaoning Dalian and Shenyang, and Heilongjiang Heihe have all declared “wartime status” for the epidemic since the end of last year, and are facing serious challenges in preventing the epidemic.
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