BEIJING — Two members of Vice President Constantino Chiwenga’s delegation have tested positive for Covid-19 at a luxury Chinese hotel — triggering a health emergency.
Hundreds of guests at Beijing’s Legendale hotel were forced into quarantine on Thursday, although officials say Chiwenga – who received the Sinopharm vaccine in February – was not among the positive cases.
Chiwenga, 64, arrived in China on July 23 with four aides aboard a private jet to be treated for a “throat problem”, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Questions are reportedly being raised in China – one of Zimbabwe’s key allies – over whether authorities hid the infection from the public.
Chiwenga – who is also Zimbabwe’s health minister – regularly takes medical flights to China, where he was treated for an esophageal problem.
The opposition has criticized expensive private jet travel chartered from the United Arab Emirates, while millions of Zimbabweans endure an underfunded health system with chronic drug shortages.
China on Saturday reported 55 new mainland coronavirus cases for July 30, up from 64 the day before, as the delta variant spreads across the country during the summer vacation.
Thirty of the new infections were local cases, up from 21 the previous day, the National Health Commission said in a statement.
There were no new deaths. The other 25 cases came from abroad.
The majority of local cases have been reported in Jiangsu province, where Nanjing, its provincial capital, is facing an outbreak of the delta variant of Covid-19 this month, attributed to airport workers cleaning an airplane. arrived from Russia.
The outbreak in Nanjing has spread to other cities in Jiangsu, the capital Beijing and other provinces such as Anhui, Sichuan, Liaoning, Guangdong and Hunan.
Suzhou, a large city of Jiangsu, announced on Saturday that it would close all chess, cards and mahjong parlors after several people in another city of Jiangsu contracted the virus while playing in such parlour.
In a bid to contain the outbreak in Beijing, some schools in the city have asked students on summer vacation to return to Beijing at least 14 days before the start of the fall semester on August 15, the Beijing Youth Daily reported.
The will pay an administration fee of 1.6 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccine through July 30.
The people vaccinated include 150 million people over 60 years of age and 12 million people aged 12 to 17 who have been declared irresponsible.
As of July 30, China’s continental registry confirmed a total of 92,930 cases confirmed by the coronavirus and the death toll of 4,636.
- Kukurigo Updates / Wall Street Journal / Beijing Youth Daily
