As 31 provincial-level regions across China on Monday warned residents against unnecessary travel in light of the outbreaks fueled by the rampaging Delta variant, Chinese officials and health experts stressed the strong infectivity and transmissibility of the mutated variant and urged the country to learn lessons from the latest outbreaks to fill the loopholes of anti-epidemic work - especially in hospitals and airports where infection risks are high.
The new surge of the outbreak triggered by the Delta variant first occurred in Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu Province, and it has since spread to 18 provinces and cities.
Residential communities - where more than 10,000 residents live - around the Guoxing community in Beijing's Haidian district have been locked down with public places in the area being closed. Nucleic acid testing has also kicked off and 4,500 samples have been collected, Beijing health officials said at a press conference on Monday. The capital city has reported several local confirmed cases associated with infected people returning from outside.
Wuhan, capital of Central China's Hubei Province, also reported seven local COVID-19 cases on Monday. The city hadn't reported any local infections since June 2020.
The outbreak, which is rapidly sweeping through the nation, has exposed loopholes in Chinese cities' daily anti-epidemic work, which sounded an alarm to the country. Chinese experts said it showed staff members at airports and designated hospitals did not conduct strict surveillance and testing of cargo and objects. They stressed that China must fix the loopholes; otherwise the country would be hit by more new mutations, as long as the overseas epidemic is not over.
