China reports rise in cases
Warns of risk of rebound as some tested positive again after recovery
China reported 433 new cases of coronavirus infections on Wednesday, the National Health Commission said yesterday, up from 406 a day earlier, with a cluster of new cases in Beijing raising concerns about the management of employees returning to work.
The total number of confirmed cases on mainland China has now reached 78,497, the Commission said, though the number of new deaths on Wednesday stood at 29, the lowest daily rate since Jan. 28.
The outbreak has now killed a total of 2,744 people in China. More than 40 countries and regions outside mainland China have reported infections.
Hubei, the central Chinese province at the epicentre of the outbreak, reported 409 new cases and 26 deaths on Wednesday. Beijing and the provinces of Heilongjiang and Henan were the locations of the other three fatalities.
The number of new cases outside Hubei stood at 24, up from 5 on the previous day and reversing five days of declines. Ten of those were in Beijing.
A statement published by the Commission yesterday, citing a meeting held the previous day, said that the situation in Hubei province and Wuhan is "still complex and serious", and added that the risk of a rebound in infection in other regions should not be overlooked.
Also, some coronavirus patients discharged from hospitals after recovery have been readmitted after testing positive again, health authorities said recently.
A health official in southern Guangdong province told state media on Wednesday that 14% of patients discharged from hospital experienced a resurgence of the virus, although they had not infected any others they had been in close contact with.
The number of new confirmed coronavirus cases in Beijing on February 26 had jumped to 10 from zero the previous day. Pang Xinghuo, deputy head of Beijing Centre of Disease Control, told a news briefing yesterday that it was a cluster case.
The new cases all stemmed from a property management agency in Beijing's Chaoyang district, and had either been working in the same office or sharing the same dormitory, Pang said.
The case showed that companies were not putting in place adequate monitoring of staff during their 14-day quarantine period, Chen Bei, deputy secretary general of Beijing city government, told a briefing later yesterday.
It has also highlighted the risks of crowded dormitories and poorly ventilated basement housing often used for some workers.
A senior medical advisor in the Chinese government who won fame for combating the SARS epidemic in 2003 yesterday said the original source of the coronavirus remains unclear.