China under rising pressure from imported COVID-19 cases: official

BEIJING, April 29 (Xinhua) -- China is under rising pressure to guard against imported COVID-19 cases and domestic resurgences, with the virus still ravaging many parts of the world, a health official said Thursday.

China has registered 364 confirmed imported COVID-19 cases since the beginning of April, an average daily increase of more than 20 percent over the previous month, Mi Feng, spokesperson with the National Health Commission (NHC), told a press conference in Beijing.

Mi also alerted the public to the long-term, complex and uncertain nature of epidemic prevention and control.

The number of new COVID-19 cases globally reached 5.75 million in the past week, of which more than 40 percent were in countries that have a land border with China, with several countries experiencing explosive surges, he noted.

Amid strengthened quarantine measures for inbound travelers, at least two kinds of reagents should be used for nucleic acid tests on the 14th day after their entry into China, said another NHC official Wang Bin, adding that the tests should, in principle, be carried out by different testing institutions to improve accuracy.

China requires people entering the country to undergo a 14-day period of quarantine and medical observation before continuing another seven-day health observation at home.

They should take nucleic acid tests on the day after the quarantine has been lifted, and again on the seventh day, Wang said.