The Chinese port city of Qingdao has reported 88 new coronavirus cases, all of them of the Omicron variant, recording the country’s highest number of daily locally transmitted cases so far this year.
China recorded 329 new coronavirus cases on the mainland on Saturday, 175 of them locally transmitted, the National Health Commission (NHC) said on Sunday, compared with 102 local cases a day earlier.
The Qingdao outbreak was mainly among middle school students in Laixi county, the Qingdao Municipal Health Commission said.
The county will implement a second round of mass testing on March 7, a Qingdao official said at a news conference on Sunday, adding that there was no major risk of further outbreak.
China’s “dynamic clearance” approach to Covid-19 aims shut off transmission routes as soon as new cases are detected.
The Qingdao outbreak helped send China’s total local confirmed case count to its highest since December 31, with other cases reported mainly in Jilin, Guangdong and Hebei provinces, according to the NHC.
The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, stood at 209, compared with 166 a day earlier.
As of March 5, mainland China had confirmed 110,868 Covid-19 cases and 4,636 fatalities.
Hong Kong on Saturday reported 37,529 new coronavirus cases and 220 related deaths. All but six of the new infections were locally transmitted, authorities said.
Macau has not recorded a case since March 2, when a resident returning from Hong Kong by bus became the territory’s 82nd case since the pandemic began, health authorities announced.
On February 27, a positive case of Covid-19 was diagnosed in a 32-year-old woman from Tanzhou in Guangdong province. She had crossed the Macau boundary several times between February 25 and 27.
- George Russell, with Reuters
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