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3 years agoon
BEIJING — More than 1,700 Chinese medical workers have been infected by the new virus that has killed nearly 1,400 people and spread to other parts of Asia and as far as the U.S. and Europe, a senior Chinese official announced Friday.
Six of the workers have died, Zeng Yixin, vice director of the National Health Commission, said at a news conference.
Medical staff work in the negative-pressure isolation ward in Jinyintan Hospital, designated for critical COVID-19 patients, in Wuhan. (Chinatopix Via AP)
Related Story: China Reports Spike in Virus Cases with New Way of Counting
The acceleration in the number of cases does not necessarily represent a sudden surge in new infections of the virus that causes COVID-19 as much as the revised methodology.
The health commission has said that the change was aimed at identifying suspected cases so they can be treated more quickly, though experts also saw it as a reflection of the crush of people seeking treatment and the struggle to keep up with a backlog of untested samples in Hubei and its capital, Wuhan, where the disease first surfaced in December.
In Taiwan, about 100 family members of people stuck in Hubei province protested outside Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council headquarters in the capital, Taipei.
About 1,000 Taiwanese hoping to fly home on charter flights have sparked a dispute between their government and China.
One flight brought 247 people back on Feb. 4. Three were not on a passenger list that Taiwan gave to Chinese authorities and one tested positive for the virus, Taiwan’s Central News Agency has reported.
Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council wants China to step up quarantine work and reach agreements with Taiwan on the names of people on priority lists for flights.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office accused Taiwan on Wednesday of “using all kinds of excuses to obstruct and delay” flights. China sees self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory rather than an independent state.
“We don’t want to politicize it, we want charter flights,” said protester Chung Chin-ming, chairman of the Chinese Cross-Strait Marriage Coordination Association in Taipei.
Chinese military medics arrive at the Tianhe International Airport in Wuhan. (Li Yun/Xinhua via AP)
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