BEIJING • China was racing to contain its worst coronavirus outbreak in months as fresh cases were reported in two more parts of the country, including the sprawling mega city of Chongqing.
The highly contagious Delta variant has already been confirmed in the capital Beijing and four other provinces, prompting mass testing and putting more than one million people under lockdown.
The National Health Commission (NHC) said yesterday that there were 55 new cases as at Friday, including 30 local ones, compared with 21 the previous day. There were no new deaths. The other 25 cases were imported infections originating overseas.
A majority of the local cases were reported in eastern Jiangsu province, the authority said.
More than 200 infections nationwide have been linked to a Delta cluster in Jiangsu, where cleaners at an airport in the city of Nanjing first tested positive on July 20.
The outbreak is geographically the largest in several months, challenging China's aggressive containment efforts, which have relied on mass testing, lockdowns and swift contact tracing.
The new cases reported yesterday in Fujian province and Chongqing included one patient who visited the tourist city of Xi'an, Shaanxi province, and an international cargo crew member at Xiamen Airlines who had recently travelled from abroad, the authorities said.
State media footage broadcast yesterday showed residents of Chongqing, a municipality that is home to more than 30 million people, queueing up for virus tests.
The authorities in one city district ordered emergency mass testing late on Friday for people who had visited venues linked to confirmed cases.
Nanjing city authorities ordered all tourist attractions and cultural venues not to open yesterday, prompted by the spike in domestic transmissions.
Hundreds of thousands have already been locked down in Jiangsu province, while Nanjing has tested all 9.2 million residents twice.
China has previously boasted of its success in snuffing out the pandemic within its borders after imposing the world's first virus lockdown early last year as Covid-19 seeped out of Wuhan, then the country's epicentre of the disease.
But an outbreak last month driven by the fast-spreading Delta variant has thrown that record into jeopardy, potentially dampening China's summer tourist season and holiday consumption.
The tourist city of Zhangjiajie in Hunan province, where a handful of cases attended a single theatre performance, locked down all 1.5 million residents and shut all tourist attractions on Friday, according to an official notice.
At least 18 cases have been traced back to the city, the state tabloid Global Times reported. Famed for its striking rock formations, the city is where part of the Avatar blockbuster was filmed.
In Beijing's Changping district, where two locally transmitted cases have been found, 41,000 people in nine housing communities were placed under lockdown on Thursday.
Most of the early Nanjing patients had been vaccinated, a senior doctor in the city was quoted as saying by local media last month, leading online users to question the efficacy of domestic vaccines.
China is now studying if it is necessary to give booster vaccine shots to vulnerable groups such as the elderly, people with underlying diseases and those who work in high-risk areas, said Mr Wang Huaqing, an expert with the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, at a press briefing yesterday.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS
