SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) – China will start releasing information from Wednesday on coronavirus patients who show no disease symptoms, ordering them into quarantine for 14 days, a health official said, after the mainland witnessed its first rise in infections in five days.
Medical workers eat at separate tables at a canteen inside Xiaotangshan Hospital, a hospital built in 2003 to treat patients with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that is now used to treat patients with coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Beijing, China March 30, 2020. China Daily via REUTERS
As local infections peter out and new cases surface among travelers returning home, the existence of virus carriers with no symptoms is fuelling public concern that people could be spreading it without knowing they are ill.
From April 1, the daily report of the National Health Commission will include details of such cases for the first time, Chang Jile, a commission official, told a briefing. People in close contact with them face 14 days of medical observation.
Asymptomatic patients under observation numbered 1,541 by Monday, with 205 of the cases having come from overseas, the commission said separately.
Monday’s 48 new infections, and one death, in mainland China were up fro