BEIJING -- A city in northern China is building a 3,000-unit quarantine facility to deal with an anticipated overflow of patients as coronavirus cases rise ahead of the annual Lunar New Year travel rush.
State media outlets on Friday showed crews leveling earth, pouring concrete and assembling prefabricated rooms in farmland in an outlying part of Shijiazhuang, the provincial capital of Hebei province, which has had the bulk of the new cases.
That recalled scenes from early last year, when China rapidly built field hospitals and turned gymnasiums into isolation centers to cope with a then-spiraling outbreak in Wuhan, where the virus was first detected in late 2019.
The spike in northern China flares as a World Health Organization team prepares to collect data on the origin of the pandemic in Wuhan, which lies to the south.
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Two of the 15 members were held up in Singapore over their health status. One, a Briton, was approved for travel Friday after testing negative for the coronavirus, while the second, a Sudanese citizen from Qatar, again tested positive, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said.
China has largely contained domestic spread of the virus, but the recent spike has raised concern because of the proximity to the capital, Beijing, and the impending rush of people planning to travel large distances to rejoin their families for the Lunar New Year, the country's most important traditional festival.
The National Health Commission said Friday that 1,001 patients were under care for the disease, 26 in serious condition. It said 144 new cases were recorded over the past 24 hours. Hebei accounted for 90 of the new cases, while Heilongjiang province farther north reported 43.
Local transmissions also occurred in the southern Guangxi region and the northern province of Shaanxi, illustrating the virus's ability to move through the vast country of 1.4 billion people despite quarantines, travel restrictions and electronic monitoring.
To date, China has reported 87,988 confirmed cases with 4,635 deaths.
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Shijiazhuang has been placed under virtual lockdown, along with the Hebei cities of Xingtai and Langfang, parts of Beijing and other cities in the northeast. That has cut off travel routes, while more than 20 million people have been told to stay home for the coming days.
China is pushing ahead with inoculations using Chinese-developed vaccines, with more than 9 million people already vaccinated and plans for 50 million to have shots by the middle of next month.
Separately, the United Kingdom is banning travel from the whole of South America and Portugal over concerns of a new variant of the coronavirus in Brazil, authorities announced Thursday.
British Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said that as of 4 a.m. Friday, arrivals from more than a dozen countries, including Argentina, Chile and Peru, will be halted "following evidence of a new variant in Brazil." Outside South America, the Cape Verde islands off the west coast of Africa and Panama in Central America were slapped with travel bans.
And in a move that prompted consternation in Portugal, Shapps said travel from that country would be halted because of its close links with Brazil, though there are exemptions for truck drivers from Portugal transporting essential goods. He said on Twitter that the move is "another way to reduce the risk of importing infections."
The restrictions also apply to the Portuguese archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores.
The ban does not apply to British and Irish citizens and third-country citizens with residence rights in the U.K. However, anyone returning from the banned destinations must quarantine themselves for 10 days with their households.
The announcement was made just a few weeks after many countries banned travel from the U.K. after the discovery of another variant of the virus around London and southeastern England, which has been blamed for a sharp rise in new coronavirus infections and deaths related to covid-19.
Information for this article was contributed by Sam McNeil, Ng Han Guan, Olivia Zhang and staff members of The Associated Press.
