SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Northwest China’s Gansu province has reported 11 new confirmed coronavirus patients, all of whom entered China on commercial flights from Iran, state media reported.
A total of 311 passengers who arrived in the provincial capital Lanzhou from Iran have now been quarantined, state broadcaster CCTV reported late on Thursday.
Before the new cases, Gansu province had reported a total of 91 infections, including two deaths, the report added.
Last month, the province became the first to lower its emergency response level from level one to level three, reflecting no new infections.
As the number of new cases in China has dwindled, attention has turned to potential infections from overseas.
Iran had 3,513 confirmed cases of the infection as of March 5, including 107 deaths, Iran’s health ministry said on Thursday.
Authorities in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong province have all pledged to quarantine travelers from countries most affected by the coronavirus, which Beijing has identified as South Korea, Japan, Iran and Italy.
Shanghai has also been tracing people who had been in contact with an Iranian traveler who was found to have the virus.
Reporting by David Steinway and Min Zhang; Editing by Stephen Coates
