New COVID cases surpass 1,000 in less than one month

After 65 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases were reported on Monday, the overall number of locally transmitted confirmed coronavirus patients during the latest outbreak that started on Oct 17 on the Chinese mainland has reached 1,067, according to the Beijing Daily newspaper.

The new locally transmitted cases reported by the National Health Commission were scattered across 11 provincial-level regions, including 20 reported in Liaoning province. During the latest outbreak, all the local cases in Liaoning were reported in the port city of Dalian, according to the provincial health commission.

Unlike the outbreak's previous confirmed cases, which were mainly associated with Ejine Banner of Alshaa League in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, the cases in Dalian point to imported cold-chain seafood and meat as the suspected source.

Dalian's first case was reported on Thursday in Zhuanghe, a coastal area under its jurisdiction that deals with imported seafood. Among the 20 patients whose information has been released, 14 are employees of a cold storage company in Zhuanghe.

Three village-level residential compounds in Zhuanghe had been designated as of Sunday as medium-risk areas for COVID-19 control and prevention.

The local government said people in Dalian must not leave the city unless it's absolutely necessary.

"The first patient had no travel history outside Zhuanghe in the past 14 days. He received routine nucleic acid tests at the cold storage company on Oct 22 and 29, and the results were all negative," Zhao Lian, deputy director of Dalian's health commission, said at an earlier news conference.

On Thursday, the patient visited Zhuanghe Central Hospital for nucleic acid testing, and the initial screening result was positive.

It's the third time that Dalian had a COVID-19 outbreak related to cold chain－the first time in July 2020 and the second in December 2020－which means that all three COVID-19 outbreaks in the city involved the cold chain.

Dalian is China's biggest port for imported cold-chain food. Around 70 percent of the country's imported cold-chain goods enter the country via Dalian, where more than 600,000 people work in cold-chain related businesses. It has also brought huge pressure on the city's COVID-19 control and prevention work.

In Henan province, 16 of the 18 newly reported cases were in Zhengzhou, its capital, according to a case tally released by the local health authorities on Monday, and school students were involved.

Data released by the local commission shows that many of the patients are students in Xingyang, a prefecture-level city in Zhengzhou.

Up to seven primary school students ages 6 and 7, a high school student who is the brother of a confirmed primary school student, and a 3-year-old kindergarten student were confirmed to be infected with COVID-19 in Xingyang.

Lou Yangsheng, Party secretary of Henan, said on Sunday at a provincial-level epidemic control and prevention meeting that the province will contain this round of the outbreak by Nov 15, according to ThePaper.cn.

Many regions nationwide are rolling out COVID-19 vaccinations for children ages 3 to 11.

Shi Baoyin in Zhengzhou contributed to this story.