China has announced a second round of quarantine for 8,000 people situated in Jilin, the second-largest city in Jilin Province located in the northeast of the country.

The Asian nation has reported five new confirmed novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) infections on Saturday, May 16 – three local and two imported. The country has reported more than 80,000 cases and 4,634 total deaths.

Despite the concentrated outbreak in Jilin, other provinces are slowly returning to normal. Beijing, the capital of the Asian powerhouse, has not recorded any new infections for a month, prompting the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC) to announce on Sunday that Beijingers were no longer required to wear masks outdoors.

This comes in time for the National People’s Congress, the national legislature of the People’s Republic of China, to hold the most significant political event for the Chinese Communist Party which has been postponed for two months.

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region recorded an additional three new cases last week. Despite this, health officials of the financial hub have not stated any intention to impose stricter social distancing regulations.

The surfacing of the clusters and cases highlights the difficulty in eliminating a community outbreak and comes amid a war of words between the United States and China. The US has also accused China of underreporting the number of cases in their country.

A commentary piece released on state media Xinhuanet Agency revolves around how the US represents less than 5% of the world’s population, but its number of cases account for over 30% of the world – urging US leaders to improve upon the country’s prevention work rather than shifting blame.

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