Communist Party authorities in the central Chinese city of Jingmen have forcibly quarantined nearly 2,200 “close contacts” of people infected with the Chinese coronavirus in recent days in an effort to contain Jingmen’s latest outbreak of the disease, the state-run Global Times reported Tuesday.
“A total of 2,195 people who have close contacts with the infected patients have been put in centralized quarantine for medical observation,” according to the newspaper.
Health officials in Jingmen reported 22 new infections of the Chinese coronavirus August 9, bringing the city’s total number of cases since August 4, when its latest coronavirus epidemic began, to 30. Jingmen metro authorities have indefinitely suspended 38 bus routes in the city as of August 10, with five of the 38 bus lines reportedly halted Tuesday morning.
Jingmen is home to roughly 400,000 residents. The prefecture-level city is located in Hubei province just 150 miles west of the city of Wuhan, where the Chinese coronavirus first emerged in late 2019.
Hubei’s health commission has not classified any of Jingmen’s coronavirus patients as “in a serious condition” as of August 10. The commission said it traced all of Jingmen’s latest coronavirus cases “to migrant workers in Wuhan Dunkou project site of China Construction Third Bureau, who came in contact with a tour group from Huaian in East China’s Jiangsu Province at a railway station in Jingzhou.”
“The latest round of epidemic outbreak in Hubei can be traced back to Dunkou project site in Wuhan,” Hubei’s Disease Prevention and Control Center said August 6.
Hubei’s current Chinese coronavirus outbreak is linked to a resurgence of the disease across China. Chinese Communist Party authorities have traced the nationwide epidemic to a single coronavirus cluster infection at Nanjing Lukou International Airport in eastern China’s Jiangsu province detected July 20.
Health authorities in Jingmen announced in July “they would start vaccinating children aged 12 to 17” against the Chinese coronavirus, according to an August 4 report by the Guardian.
“[T]he city of Jingmen in the central province of Hubei will start vaccinating those aged between 15 and 17, and children between 12 and 14 in August,” Reuters reported July 14, citing Chinese “state media and local disease control officials.”
China’s official state-run press agency, Xinhua, and the Global Times both reported in mid-July that the city of Jingzhou in Hubei province — not the city of Jingmen — would “focus on vaccinating minors aged between 12 and 17 and people over 60 from August.”
Jingmen translates literally to “Gateway to Jingzhou” in Mandarin, as it served this purpose in ancient China. Modern-day Jingmen is located 50 miles north of Jingzhou, which is a larger city with a population of over 5.2 million.