SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Mainland China reported seven new COVID-19 cases on May 13, including its first local transmissions in more than three weeks, the country’s national health authority said on Friday.
Two of the new cases were local infections in the eastern province of Anhui, the National Health Commission said in a statement. The cases were the first local transmissions since April 20, when China recorded two local infections in the southwestern province of Yunnan, where a city on the border with Myanmar reported a new cluster in late March.
The other five cases announced Friday were imported infections originating overseas. The commission had reported nine cases a day earlier, all imported.
The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, rose to 22 from 14 cases a day earlier.
China’s official Xinhua news agency reported that one of the local cases, surnamed Li, had come into contact with an arrival from overseas in Dalian, a port city in China’s northeastern Liaoning province.
The other case, surnamed Zhang, was in close contact with Li during a training class Li led in the city of Lu’an, near Anhui’s provincial capital Hefei, Xinhua reported.
On Wednesday, a WeChat account for a district in Lu’an said authorities had declared two areas in the city “medium risk” in response to the cases. State media reported that Lu’an plans to conduct mass testing in the city’s main urban area.
The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Mainland China now stands at 90,815, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,636.
(Reporting by Wang Jing and Andrew Galbraith; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Gerry Doyle)
