China sees rise in new cases as Tokyo records highest jump in a day
BEIJING: China reported 30 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, up from 19 a day earlier as the number of cases involving travellers from abroad as well as local transmissions increased, highlighting the difficulty in stamping out the outbreak.
The National Health Commission said in a statement that 25 of the latest cases involved people who had come from abroad, compared with 18 such cases a day earlier.
Five new locally transmitted infections were also reported on Saturday, all in the southern coastal province of Guangdong.
China has now reported a total of 81,669 cases, while the death toll has risen by three to 3,329.
Though daily infections have fallen dramatically from the height of the epidemic in February, when hundreds of new cases were reported every day, Beijing remains unable to completely halt new infections despite imposing some of the most drastic measures to curb the spread of the virus.
The so-called imported cases and asymptomatic patients - those who have the virus and can give it to others but show no symptoms - have become among China's chief concerns in recent weeks.
The health commission said 47 new asymptomatic cases were reported on Saturday, compared with 64 a day earlier.
In Japan, 143 more cases have been reported in Tokyo, the city's governor said yesterday, with the highest daily jump bringing the number of cases in the Japanese capital to more than 1,000.
WORRYING
The number of cases with untraceable transmission routes had increased in recent days, Governor Yuriko Koike said in a livecast YouTube video , adding it was worrying there were a number of people who were infected at hospitals.
The majority of confirmed cases over the weekend in Tokyo were of people under the age of 50, a member of Japan's Health Ministry task force for the virus said, adding that many of them were in their 20s and 30s. - REUTERS
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