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China's Local Symptomatic COVID-19 Cases Rise as Jilin Outbreak Grows


A worker in a protective suit collects a swab from a resident at a residential compound under lockdown, following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China, March 14, 2022.
A worker in a protective suit collects a swab from a resident at a residential compound under lockdown, following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China, March 14, 2022.

Mainland China posted a steep jump in daily COVID-19 infections on Tuesday, with new symptomatic cases more than doubling from a day earlier to a two-year high as a virus outbreak expanded rapidly in the country's northeast.

A total of 3,507 domestically transmitted cases with confirmed symptoms were reported on Monday across more than a dozen provinces and municipalities, the National Health Commission said, up from 1,337 a day earlier.

China's caseload is still tiny by global standards, but health experts said the rate of increase in daily cases over the next few weeks will be a crucial factor in determining whether China's tough "dynamic clearance" approach - which aims to contain each outbreak - is still effective against the rapidly spreading Omicron variant.

Nearly 90% of the confirmed symptomatic cases were found in the northeastern province of Jilin, which has banned its 24.1 million population from traveling in and out of the province and across different areas within the province without notifying local police.

Jilin officials should step up the preparation of temporary hospitals and designated hospitals and make use of idle venues to ensure all infections and their close contacts are isolated, a local Communist Party authority-backed paper said, citing the provincial head of the Party.

The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, stood at 1,768 compared with 906 a day earlier.

There were no new deaths, leaving the death toll unchanged at 4,636.

As of March 14, mainland China had reported 120,504 cases with confirmed symptoms, including both local ones and those arriving from outside the mainland.

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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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