China's latest COVID-19 resurgence spreads to 21 provinces

A medical worker takes a swab sample from a citizen for nucleic acid test at a testing site in Xining, northwest China's Qinghai Province, Nov. 8, 2021. Xining started its second round of mass nucleic acid testing at 9 a.m. on Monday. As of Nov. 7, Xining finished the first round of testing, and all swab samples from 1,448,000 citizens came back negative. (Xinhua/Wu Gang)

BEIJING, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- The latest COVID-19 resurgence in China had spread to 21 provincial-level regions as of Saturday, where new locally transmitted cases or asymptomatic carriers were reported during the past few days, a health official said Saturday.

With the number of COVID-19 cases surpassing 250 million worldwide, the country is facing greater challenges of preventing inbound cases, said Mi Feng, a spokesperson for the National Health Commission (NHC), at a press conference.

The country is also facing the risk of infectious respiratory illnesses brought about by low temperature, noted Mi, adding that risks are doubled under such circumstances.

Despite the complex situation caused by the resurgence, Wu Liangyou, an official with the NHC, told the press conference that the epidemic situation has generally stabilized across the country.

Multiple provincial-level regions previously hit by COVID-19 have effectively cut the spread of the virus and brought the epidemic under control, Wu said.

Though still in a critical stage, the recent COVID-19 outbreak in Dalian, northeast China's Liaoning Province, has been contained within the city, Wu added.

China will stick to the target of clearing any COVID-19 infection in a timely manner, and prevent both imported cases and domestic resurgences, Mi said, demanding early detection, swift response, targeted containment, and effective treatment of COVID-19 patients.