Jilin responds to spike in COVID cases

Jilin province reported 3,076 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases and 991 asymptomatic carriers on Monday, local officials said on Tuesday.

Of the confirmed cases, 2,601 were found in Jilin city, 460 in Changchun, five in Siping and 10 in Yanbian Korean autonomous prefecture.

Of the asymptomatic carriers, 979 were identified in Jilin, three in Changchun, two in Yanbian, five in Siping and two in Meihekou.

By 9 am on Tuesday, the province had also recorded 1,427 preliminary positive cases. Those awaited further examination and have been placed in closed-loop management, Zhang Li, deputy director of the Jilin Health Commission said at a morning news conference.

"Five makeshift hospitals have been built, including one in Changchun and four in Jilin," he said. "Seven medical institutions in the province have been vacated and 22,880 beds are available to receive infected patients."

Inspection teams will be set up in designated hospitals to provide special medical services for pregnant women and patients undergoing dialysis, radiotherapy or chemotherapy, he added.

During a conference on COVID-19 prevention and control held on Monday night, Han Jun, governor of the province, urged the whole province to make an all-out effort to contain the coronavirus and achieve the goal of no new positive cases reported outside quarantine areas within one week.

"We should improve work efficiency, including nucleic acid screening, for all residents in the province, and provide medical treatment of all positive patients and centralized quarantine of close contacts," he said.

"We are facing a complex and challenging situation of epidemic prevention and control as the epidemic is on the rise," Zhang said. "Medical and epidemic prevention supplies for the whole province can only meet needs for two to three days. We are making a concentrated effort to get support from all sides."