China urges overseas Chinese to remain home as imported COVID-19 cases rise
03 March, 2020
Chinese authorities on Tuesday (Mar 3) asked overseas Chinese to reconsider or minimise their travel plans as the coronavirus epidemic spreads around the world and prompts an uptick of imported cases arriving in the united states.
Travellers from countries with severe coronavirus outbreaks who arrive in Guangdong province, an financial and export powerhouse in the south, must undergo a 14-day quarantine - state media reported on Tuesday.
"We want to distance ourselves from the virus, but what cannot be broken may be the flesh and blood relationships between overseas Chinese and their families in their hometowns," said the federal government of Qingtian county in the southeastern Zhejiang province.
It added that travelling was the simplest way for cross-infections to occur, describing staying home as the "best form of protection".
"With regard to your family's health insurance and safety, please strengthen your precautions, carefully choose your travel plans and minimise mobility," it said.
The number of new daily infections overseas has exceeded new cases in China, with Italy, South Korea and Iran being things.
Mainland China had 125 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections on Monday, the National Health Commission said on Tuesday, down from 202 cases a day earlier and the cheapest because the authority started publishing nationwide data in January.
Excluding cases in Hubei province, where in fact the outbreak first started, there have been 11 new cases in mainland China on Monday.
Seven of the new cases were imported, involving Chinese nationals who had travelled from Italy to Qingtian county.
The seven people had close connection with a previously disclosed case and all eight worked together in a restaurant in Bergamo, a city in the Lombardy region of northern Italy, the Qingtian government said in a statement on its WeChat account.
Last week, six of these took a flight from Milan to Shanghai, stopping over in Moscow, as the seventh flew via Germany to Shanghai. They tested positive for the coronavirus on Monday after arriving in Qingtian.
None of them have been to Hubei province or its capital Wuhan, the Qingtian government said.
China has said it'll focus on protecting against those infected with coronavirus from crossing borders, as other imported cases had found its way to the country last week.
China's new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections on Monday was driven by an additional decline in new confirmed cases in Wuhan, the town hit hardest by the pathogen in China.
New cases in Wuhan fell to 111 from 193 a day earlier, and accounted for nearly all the 114 new infections in central Hubei province on Monday.
Excluding Hubei, there have been 11 new cases in mainland China on Monday, bringing the full total number of confirmed cases in mainland China so far to 80,151.
The death toll from the outbreak in mainland China had reached 2,943 by the finish of Monday, up by 31 from the previous day.
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