The epicenter of the second wave of coronavirus epidemic was formed inside China, in the province of Heilongjiang, which borders on several Russian regions at once. In Heilongjiang Province, as many as 925 cases of infection and 13 deaths have been confirmed. Over the past ten days, 57 cases of infection have been confirmed there.
The Chinese authorities closed entrance to the provincial capital city of Harbin. To move from district to district, local residents are required to obtain a QR code on their phones, which confirms that they are healthy. Those returning from abroad and foreigners have to spend four weeks in quarantine.
Inspector of the Heilongjiang Provincial Health Commission Xie Yunlong said that the outbreak of COVID-19 occurred because managers and employees of hospitals did not pay enough attention to anti-epidemic activities, nor did they perform relevant duties and procedures.
According to the Chinese publication The Paper, the decision to close Harbin was made after a 87-year-old patient infected at least 78 people at hospital due to medical negligence. In early April, the man had fever for several days, but he was not tested for coronavirus. Afterwards, the patient was transferred to the first hospital of Harbin Medical University without special protection and accommodated in a general ward with other patients. As a result of the investigation, disciplinary action was taken against 18 officials, including Deputy Mayor of Harbin.
Another pest-spot is located in the south of China, in Guangzhou, where the African diaspora is widely represented. The coronavirus epidemic has been on the decline in China lately. However, many in the country fear a second wave from abroad. Therefore, fear of foreigners has been growing in China lately. Ironically, Europe and other the countries of other regions of the world were fearing Chinese people during the beginning of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, the United States continues to blame the Chinese authorities for not sending a timely notification to the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of coronavirus infection.
"We strongly believe that the Chinese Communist Party did not report the outbreak of the new coronavirus in a timely fashion to the World Health Organization," Pompeo said in a briefing in Washington," Mike Pompeo said.
"Even after the CCP did notify the WHO of the coronavirus outbreak, China didn't share all of the information that it had. Instead it covered up how dangerous the disease is. It didn't report sustained human-to-human transmission for a month until it was in every province inside of China. It censored those who tried to warn the world in order to halt the testing of new samples, and it destroyed existing samples. The CCP still has not shared the virus sample from inside of China with the outside world, making it impossible to track the disease's evolution," US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said.
Accusations against China about the concealment of information and calls to share data were voiced in other countries - the UK, Australia, Germany.
The Kremlin does not see any reason to believe that China was concealing information about the spread of the coronavirus infection. "We have not seen any confirmed arguments for such statements," Dmitry Peskov, official spokesman for Presdient Putin said. "The coronavirus is a common challenge for all of humanity, a challenge for the global economy and each country individually," he said.
Researchers at the School of Public Health at Hong Kong University believe that the real, more accurate number of those infected with coronavirus during the first wave of the COVID-19 epidemic in mainland China could be more than 232,000 people, which exceeds official figures four times.