Outside of Wuhan, this is the next major outbreak after Beijing in June 2020. According to the statistics just released on the morning of January 7, China continued to record 52 indigenous Covid-19 cases on January 6, including up to 51 people in Hebei province. Out of 79 asymptomatic cases also 69 people from this province.
Thus, as of January 2, after just 5 days of detecting the first case, Ha Bac province had more than 200 cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection. This is identified as a serious outbreak of community outbreaks in China after the country has applied many drastic and drastic measures to control the disease for more than a year.
Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei province, is considered the “epicenter” of this epidemic when there are up to 50 out of 51 cases of the province in just 6/1. Up to now, Ha Bac has mobilized about 3,000 medical workers from other places to support the epidemic, mainly conducting mass testing for people.
This city of 11 million people completed sampling for about 2 million people on the first day of mass testing. Although it has not been blocked, so far, many highways to the locality have now closed or limited travel. A series of airlines canceled flights to Shijiazhuang, while train stations have stopped selling tickets from here.
From January 6, all passengers traveling to other locations from Shijiazhuang Airport must present a negative nucleic acid test result within 72 hours.
Three officials in Shijiazhuang’s Gaocheng District, the only high-risk epidemic zone in China today, were disciplined with the form of a warning for ineffective anti-epidemic work, while Hebei province was subjected to Chinese media. National criticism is lack of transparency and delay in translation announcement.
Up to now, China has 49 areas at risk and 1 high risk area due to Covid-19 outbreaks in the community.