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A man shows a welcome cardboard written to his girlfriend, one of the medics supporting virus-hit Hubei Province, in Lanzhou, northwest China’s Gansu Province, March 22, 2020. The third batch of medical assistance team supporting Hubei from Gansu, which consists of 147 members, returned home on Sunday as the epidemic situation in Hubei has been greatly eased. (Xinhua/Du Zheyu)
Source: Xinhua
BEIJING (Reuters) – Shanghai increased airport screening on Saturday as imported coronavirus infections from countries such as Italy and Iran emerge as the biggest source of new cases in China outside Hubei, the province where the outbreak originated.
Mainland China had 99 new confirmed cases on Friday, according to official data. Of the 25 that were outside Hubei, 24 came from outside China.
Shanghai, which had three new cases that originated from abroad on Friday, said it would step up control measures at the border, which had become “the main battlefield”.
At a news conference, Shanghai Customs officials said they city would check all passengers from seriously affected countries for the virus, among other airport measures.
Shanghai already requires passengers flying in from such countries, regardless of nationality, to be quarantined for 14 days. They will now be escorted home in vehicles provided by the government.
Tighter screening has greatly lengthened waiting times at Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport – some passengers say they have had to wait as long as seven hours.
The Shanghai government vowed on Saturday to severely punish passengers who concealed infections.
Beijing police said on Saturday they would work with other departments to prevent imported infections. They said some members of a Chinese family flying in from Italy on March 4 had failed to fill in health declarations accurately, and later tested positive for the virus.
In addition to the growing risk of imported infections, China faces a challenge in trying to get migrant workers back to work by early April.
So far, 78 million migrant workers, or 60% of those who left for the Lunar New Year holiday in January, have returned to work.
Yang Wenzhuang of the National Health Commission (NHC) said that the “risk of contagion from increased population flows and gathering is increasing … We must not relax or lower the bar for virus control”.
But new cases in mainland China continued to decline, with just 99 new cases on Friday, the lowest number the NHC started publishing nationwide figures on Jan. 20, against 143 on Thursday.
Most of these cases, which include infections of Chinese nationals who caught the virus abroad, were in the northwesterly Gansu province, among quarantined passengers who flew into the provincial capital Lanzhou from Iran between March 2 and 5.
For the second day in a row, there were no new infections in Hubei outside the provincial capital Wuhan, where new cases fell to the lowest level since Jan. 25.
The total number of confirmed cases in mainland China so far is 80,651, with 3,070 deaths, up by 28 from Thursday.
Hubei reported 28 deaths, 21 of them in Wuhan.
Source: reuters
BEIJING (Reuters) – About a quarter of China’s new confirmed cases and almost all of those outside the epidemic’s epicentre in Wuhan originated outside the country on Friday, according to official data.
Most of these cases, which include infections of Chinese nationals who caught the virus abroad, were in China’s northwestern Gansu province, among quarantined passengers who entered the provincial capital of Lanzhou on commercial flights from Iran between March 2 and March 5.
Mainland China had 99 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections on Friday, the country’s National Health Commission (NHC) said on Saturday, down from 143 cases a day earlier and marking the lowest number since Jan. 20, when the NHC started to publish nationwide figures.
Outside of central China’s Hubei province, there were 25 new confirmed cases reported on March 6, of which 24 came from outside China.
The capital Beijing reported four new cases on Friday, of which three came from Italy, according to a notice from the Beijing health commission posted on its official Weibo account on Saturday.
There were also three cases in Shanghai that originated abroad, and one in Guangdong province on Friday, according to the National Health Commission.
The total nationwide number of cases that originated outside China reached 60 as of the end of Friday.
For the second day in a row, there were no new infections in Hubei outside of the provincial capital of Wuhan, where new cases fell to the lowest level since Jan. 25.
Special institutions like prisons, detention centres and nursing homes in Wuhan, which have seen nearly 1,800 confirmed cases as of March 5, still have potential risks in virus control and prevention, the Communist Party’s Politics and Law Commission said on Saturday.
The total number of confirmed cases in mainland China so far is 80,651.
Source: Reuters
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s central province of Hubei, excluding the provincial capital Wuhan, has reported zero new cases of coronavirus over 24 hours for the first time in the outbreak, as authorities seek to stem imported infections in other areas.
Wuhan, the centre of the epidemic, reported 126 new confirmed cases on Thursday but there were no new infections elsewhere in the province, the National Health Commission said on Friday.
Elsewhere in China, schools in provinces reporting no new cases for a number of days started to set reopening dates.
Qinghai, a northwesterly that had reported no new infections for 29 days as of March 5, said it would stagger the start date of different schools between March 11 and March 20, according to a notice posted on an official website.
The southwesterly province of Guizhou has said its schools will start reopening from March 16.
Outside of Hubei, there were 17 new confirmed cases, bringing the total new infections in mainland China to 143 on Thursday, up from 139 cases a day earlier.
Of the 17 new cases, 16 were imported from outside of China – 11 in Gansu province, four in Beijing and one in Shanghai.
A total of 311 passengers arriving at Gansu’s provincial capital Lanzhou from Iran were quarantined, state television reported late on Thursday.
Beijing’s four new cases had come from Italy. On Friday, one of the city’s government officials described its epidemic control campaign as being at its most challenging period, adding that roughly 827,000 people who had returned to the capital from outside – most of them from extended Lunar New Year holidays – were currently undergoing home observation.
Last month, Gansu became the first province to lower its emergency response measures from level I to level III, reflecting the lack of new infections.
Tibet became the latest region to lower its emergency response level on Friday, announcing on an official website that some areas had eased to level II and others to level III.
Health authorities in Shanghai said that the city had recorded three new cases in the first 12 hours of Friday. All were Chinese nationals who had studied in Iran, state media reported. [B9N28E04N]
All three had been transferred by Shanghai customs to quarantine on March 3, a spokeswoman for the city’s health commission told a news briefing.
Despite the fresh cases in Wuhan, senior Chinese government officials expressed optimism about its situation as the city shut its second makeshift hospital on Friday afternoon, state radio reported.
“As the situation in Wuhan and Hubei improves, relevant authorities, with approvals, will make timely adjustments according to China’s Infectious Diseases Law and public health emergency regulations,” Ding Xiangyang, vice secretary general at the State Council, told a news briefing.
“When I went out in the morning, the cherry blossoms were blooming in front of my door, telling us that winter has passed and spring has come. I think the day everyone has been looking forward to is not far away,” he said.
As new cases dwindle in China, attention has turned to potential infections arriving from overseas.
Authorities in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong have all vowed to quarantine travellers from countries hit the hardest by the coronavirus, which Beijing identified as South Korea, Japan, Iran and Italy.
The overall accumulated number of confirmed cases in mainland China stood at 80,552 as of Thursday.
The death toll from the outbreak in mainland China was 3,042 as of the end of Thursday, up by 30 from the previous day.
Hubei reported 29 new deaths, while in Wuhan, 23 people died.
Source: Reuters
LANZHOU, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) — Dunhuang Academy China and Peking University have signed an agreement to establish a research center for Dunhuang studies, aiming to nurture more high-level research talent in the area.
Rong Xinjiang, a professor with Peking University, and Zhao Shengliang, the head of the Dunhuang Academy, will be the directors of the new center.
With a focus on the documents of Dunhuang and grottoes art, Dunhuang studies is an emerging interdisciplinary subject that covers areas such as history, geography, archeology and art.
The Dunhuang Academy, located in northwest China’s Gansu Province, administers the Mogao Grottoes, a renowned UNESCO World Heritage site that showcases the cultural integration and mutual learning among different civilizations along the ancient Silk Road.
The Mogao Grottoes are home to a priceless collection of Buddhist artwork — more than 2,000 colored sculptures and 45,000 square meters of murals — in 735 caves carved along a cliff by ancient worshippers.
Peking University is a pioneer of Dunhuang studies in China, with scholars of its predecessor beginning research in the area in the early 20th century.
Source: Xinhua
LANZHOU, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) — Bound by lower education levels, traditions and household responsibilities, most ethnic minority women in China’s impoverished regions have never dared to think of ways other than farming to help their families gain a better life.
However, with the government campaign to eradicate poverty gathering steam, small manufacturing workshops are bringing jobs to their doorsteps and empowering the women to take new roles in their families.
Ma Xiuping, living in a village in Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture, northwest China’s Gansu Province, could not hide her excitement when recalling the first time she was paid by the factory she started working in.
“I could barely read, and I never imagined I could get a salary like urban workers,” said Ma, who is in her 50s.
The rural cooperative Ma works at makes traditional cloth shoes and employs more than 50 impoverished women workers.
In Gansu Province, such poverty-alleviation factories have created jobs for more than 8,000 women who were once trapped working on farms and taking care of all the family chores, and for them, a different life has started.
“Now I don’t have to ask my husband for money, which makes me more confident,” said the 28-year-old Ma Fatumai who worked at the same workshop with Ma Xiuping. For her first month of work, she earned 1,350 yuan (about 190 U.S. dollars).
For Huang Ayingshe, who works in another poverty-reduction workshop in the prefecture, a job also means more association with the outside world, which she says is “much more fun” than staying at home.
As the deadline to eradicate absolute poverty by 2020 approaches, China is focusing efforts on the nation’s poorest people, and Gansu Province is one of the major battlefields.
Answering the central leadership’s call for “precision poverty alleviation,” which demands tailored policies to suit different local situations, the province seeks to tap the power of women in the battle to wipe out absolute poverty by 2020.
In July, the All-China Women’s Federation held a meeting in the Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture, which stressed women’s roles in fighting poverty and called on them to contribute their strength.
Official data showed that China lifted 13.86 million people in rural areas out of poverty in 2018, with the number of impoverished rural residents dropping from 98.99 million in late 2012 to 16.6 million by the end of last year.
Source: Xinhua
Kunming, the capital of southwestern Yunnan province, plans to become the third mainland Chinese city to ban public transport users from listening to loud music, watching noisy videos or talking loudly on phones.
Acting on complaints from passengers, the city is testing public support for a change to its subway passenger code of conduct that would ban excessive noise, the municipal transport bureau said last week.
At least two other cities, Beijing and Lanzhou – the capital of northwestern Gansu province – have barred travellers from talking loudly or turning up their electronic devices on the underground.
Kunming’s proposed amendment includes a ban on loud conversation, with administrative penalties for people found breaking the rules. The public have until September 5 to give feedback on the proposal.
“Some passengers ignore other people and play their electronic devices with the sound on, causing a great disturbance to others. Such behaviour needs to be regulated,” the bureau said.
The proposal was popular on social media.
“I’d suggest operators of high-speed trains and civil aviation also adopt this ban,” one user of the Weibo microblogging service wrote. “Don’t you have the money to buy earphones?”
Lanzhou, which opened its first subway line in June, banned on passengers from playing devices without wearing headphones from the day the first train rolled.
Also in June, Beijing issued a code of conduct for public transport passengers that included a ban on excessive noise. Penalties there included personal credit system demerits, black marks that could be removed by working as a subway volunteer for an hour.
Source: SCMP
Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, visits a Yellow River management point to learn about the management, protection and flood control project construction of the Yellow River in Lanzhou, northwest China’s Gansu Province, Aug. 21, 2019. (Xinhua/Wang Ye)
Source: Xinhua
continuously updated blog about China & India
continuously updated blog about China & India
continuously updated blog about China & India
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