SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s financial hub of Shanghai said on Monday it had discovered one new confirmed coronavirus case involving a 51- year-old man who carried out transportation work at the city’s Pudong Airport.
The case comes as Shanghai is hosting the China International Import Fair (CIIE), a major import fair aimed at highlighting China’s openess to trade. The event begun on Nov. 5 and is set to end on Tuesday.
On Sunday, China reported a local infection in Tianjin – a cold storage worker who had handled frozen pork from Germany. The city government is carrying out tests on some cold storage facilities and their staff.
Wu Jinglei, the head of Shanghai’s health commission, told a news conference that the man there had not recently come into contact with frozen products, nor had he been involved with the CIIE over the course of his work.
The city has raised the risk level for Zhujiao town in the Pudong New Area, where the patient lives, to medium-risk. However the risk level for other parts of Shanghai remains unchanged.
Pudong airport, the city’s main aviation hub for international flights, was operating as normal, state media reported. The last time Shanghai reported a locally transmitted case was on June 29.
China has brought the pandemic under control within its borders after the coronavirus first emerged in the central city of Wuhan last year but sporadic outbreaks have continued to occur, with recent cases in places such as Qingdao and Xinjiang.
On Monday China’s national health commission said the total number of confirmed COVID-19 infections in mainland China now stood at 86,245, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.
(Reporting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Alison Williams)
