China's top health authorities said the COVID-19 epidemics in at least ten regions have been or are being brought under control but that the overall state of epidemic in the country is in a fast-developing phase and remains complicated and the proportion of severe cases in this round of epidemic resurgence is higher than that of any previous wave.
In the past 14 days, 14 provinces in China have reported domestically transmitted COVID-19 cases. The current epidemic is still in a rapidly-developing phase and remains complicated, Mi Feng, spokesperson from China's National Health Commission said at a press conference on Saturday afternoon.
The risk of epidemic spread and spillover in China-Mongolia border city Ejin Banner, North China's Inner Mongolia have been effectively controlled as the region had reported no further cases had spilled-over cases to other regions for four days since October 25. Most new cases detected in recent days were identified at quarantined points. Previous anti-epidemic measures have proved to be effective and that viral transmission in communities have been basically controlled.
While the outbreak in the China-Russia border city of Heihe in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province is an isolated viral chain that was caused by an imported case, unrelated to those from Inner Mongolia or Gansu.
Since October 27, the outbreak in Heihe rapidly escalated with new cases continued to be detected among mass testing, suggesting that viral spread has caused community transmission and poses risk of further spread or spill over, according to the NHC.
Heihe reported 26 new cases on Friday. As part of anti-epidemic measures, Heihe has switched the health code of all residents in Heihe city to yellow. The traffic-light health code system is an important pass to travel around in the county.
Guo Yanhong, an official from the NHC said about 40 percent of patients discovered in this round of outbreak were elder aged 60 years old and above, a lot higher than previous infection percentage in earlier epidemics, which is said to be around 18.5 percent.
Many of the senior citizens infected have underlying diseases so the proportion of severe cases in this round of epidemic resurgence is higher than that of previous waves, Guo noted.
