Coronavirus: Chinese premier warns against cover-up of outbreaks
- Li Keqiang says transparency and correct reporting essential to containing the spread
- Number of infections continues to rise in Hebei neighbouring the nation’s capital
Premier Li Keqiang told a State Council executive meeting on Friday that transparency was essential to controlling outbreaks.
“In the process of prevention and control of the infectious disease, one of the keys is to seek the truth from facts, openly and transparently release epidemic information, and never allow concealing or under-reporting,” Li said, according to a statement released on Saturday.
Coronavirus: Chinese capital on alert as cases rise next door in Hebei
His warning comes as China battles a new cluster of coronavirus infections, with a new outbreak spreading rapidly in Hebei province, which surrounds the nation’s capital, the country’s top security priority.
On Saturday, mainland China reported 69 new cases, more than double the 33 reported a day earlier. Most of the locally transmitted cases – 46 out of 48 – were in Hebei.
State broadcaster CCTV reported on Sunday that all religious activities had been stopped temporarily in villages in Shijiazhuang, the provincial capital and epicentre of the Hebei outbreak.
The authorities also dismissed speculation that European and American priests had been preaching in the community, the report said.
Beijing shuts religious venues as coronavirus spreads in Hebei Catholic heartland
Shi Jian, director of the Hebei Centre for Disease Control and Prevention’s emergency management office, said on Sunday that authorities could not see “an obvious turning point” yet for the outbreak in the province.
The risk of the disease spreading persisted and contact tracing continued, he said.
Genetic sequencing of samples from Shijiazhuang and neighbouring Xingtai suggested the strains came from Europe. And with no relation to other samples recently found in China, the outbreak was an isolated incident, the epidemiologist said.
Shi added that these strains were also different from the recent mutants from Britain and South Africa. Based on the time of onset of the early cases, the first case might have occurred earlier than December 15, he said.
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Li also said that tighter prevention and better treatment of the virus was not only a public health issue, it affected China’s national security and social stability.
Monitoring and early warning, nucleic acid testing, isolation, medical treatment, contact tracing and emergency response mechanisms should be toughened to contain the virus, he said.
The Chinese government strictly controls all research into its origins, and a year on, World Health Organization (WHO) investigators have not been able to go to Wuhan to carry out tests at a seafood and poultry market in Wuhan, Hubei province, linked to initial cases.
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Chinese researchers have said strains of the virus could be traced to eight countries from four continents before the outbreak in Wuhan, suggesting the epidemic could have originated outside of China although other scientists have questioned such findings.
Researchers in a number of countries, including in Italy and France, are also taking another look at pneumonia deaths before December 2019 to see if Covid-19 was the cause.
Meanwhile, a study by the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention indicated that over 4 per cent of the 11 million people in the city might have been exposed to the coronavirus, an estimate that equates to 10 times the 50,008 people officially recorded in mid-April.
Additional reporting by Stephen Chen
