More than 2900 dead as China gears up for ‘imported’ Covid-19 cases

An “imported” case of coronavirus from Italy was reported from east Zhejiang province, the latest after Beijing, Guangdong and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

China on Monday said 202 new confirmed cases and 42 deaths were reported across the country in the last 24 hours as authorities here tightened measures against imported cases with the outbreak situation rapidly worsening globally.

The overall confirmed cases on the mainland had reached 80,026 by the end of Sunday with 2912 people dying of the Covid-19 epidemic, national health commission (NHC) officials said Monday.

The number of new Covid-19 cases at the outbreak epicentre Wuhan fell below 200 for the first time in 34 days, state media reported adding that 196 new cases reported in Hubei Province in the last 24 hours, with 14 cities reporting zero new cases

According to reports in state media outlets, eastern China’s Zhejiang province reported an “imported” case of Covid-19 from Italy, becoming another region in China that has seen a case from abroad after Beijing, Guangdong and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

In all, five imported cases have been reported in China, two of which are in Beijing.

“The two imported cases of Covid-19 reported in Beijing on Saturday were Chinese nationals, who had flown in from Iran and had been in close contact with the first confirmed Covid-19 patient who came back to Northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region from Iran,” the Global Times reported Monday.

China has adopted strict measures on entry-exit epidemic control including requiring to submit a declaration of health to screen people with epidemic symptoms, Lin Wei, an official at the General Administration of Customs has said.

“Anyone entering or exiting ports and airports should have their temperatures checked and strict inspections will be carried out on people with symptoms, those from regions severely hit by the virus and those who have had contact with confirmed patients,” Lin said.

Meanwhile, a new research led by top respiratory specialist Zhong Nanshan, who is leading the NHC’s anti-outbreak campaign, has found that the median incubation period of the coronavirus disease was four days and nearly half of the patients did not have a fever when first admitted to the hospital.

The team’s study on the disease in China based on a dataset of 1099 Covid-19 patients from 552 hospitals during the first two months of the outbreak.

It was published in the prestigious medical journal, The New England Journal of Medicine.

Zhong and his team calculated the data after removing the extreme cases of incubation: Two patients from the sample were found with an incubation period of as long as 24 days, and for those living in Wuhan, Hubei Province for a long time or in contact with Wuhan residents, the incubation period was usually zero days.

The study found that the most common symptoms were fever (43.8 per cent on admission and 88.7 per cent during hospitalisation) and cough (67.8 per cent).

Among the patients included in the study more than 23 per cent had at least one coexisting illness like hypertension and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.