An untraced coronavirus outbreak in a Chinese city near the Russian border and a spate of new cases in Wuhan has prompted fears of a fresh wave of infections in China.
On Sunday, Chinese authorities reclassified Shulan, a city near the Russian and North Korean borders, as high risk, after a cluster of cases connected to a woman with no known history of travel or exposure to the virus.
It came just a week after China designated all regions in the country as low or medium risk. On Sunday the country’s national health commission reported 17 new cases, its second day of a double-digit rise and its highest number in nearly two weeks.Five locally transmitted cases were in three provinces which border Russia or North Korea – three in Jilin, and one each in Heilongjiang and Liaoning.
All of Jilin’s new cases were in Shulan city, including a 28-year-old woman, a 45-year-old man and a 56-year-old man, bringing the city’s total to 12.
According to a local government WeChat account, on 2 May Shulan health authorities said that in the last three weeks of April, 308 Shulan residents had returned from Russia via Suifenhe and Manzhouli ports. Eight were quarantined in a Jilin infectious disease hospital, and the remaining 300 were isolated in Shulan city, the People’s Daily reported.
In the city of Wuhan, where the virus originated at the end of last year, Chinese authorities also reported five new cases on Sunday, the city’s highest number of new infections since 11 March.
The new cases, all local transmissions, were among 17 new cases nationwide, the highest in almost two weeks.
Authorities in Wuhan imposed draconian restrictions on travel and movement in what appeared to have been a successful bid to quash the outbreak.
That lockdown began to ease in recent weeks, as authorities said the disease was under control, most recently with children returning to school, and travel to and from.
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