China's latest Covid resurgence spreads to 14 provinces

As of Saturday, the latest Covid-19 resurgence in China had spread to 14 provinces, where new locally transmitted cases or asymptomatic carriers were reported during the past 14 days, a health official said.

The pandemic prevention and control situation is grim and complicated as infections are still spreading rapidly, Xinhua news agency quoted Mi Feng, a spokesperson for the National Health Commission (NHC), as saying to reporters here.

China's top epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan, however, said on Saturday that the country will be able to effectively contain the latest resurgence within a month.

"The coronavirus and the pandemic cannot be eradicated within a short period of time," he said, calling on other countries to adopt strict and prioritized measures against Covid-19 and actively roll out vaccination.

Zhong said he expects that more than 80 per cent of Chinese residents will have been fully vaccinated by the end of this year.

In the last 24 hours, the Chinese mainland reported 59 new locally transmitted Covid-19 cases and 19 new imported cases, according to the NHC daily report.

Of the new local cases, 26 were reported in Heilongjiang, 19 in Inner Mongolia, 11 in Gansu, two in Beijing, and one in Ningxia, the Commission said.

The total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases on the mainland has now reached 97,080, with 4,636 deaths.