Members of the Armed Police patrol a train station in Suifenhe, in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. The city is a major transportation hub for China-Russia trade. Photo: CFP

Some train service connecting China-Russia border city of Suifenhe to other Chinese cities will be suspended on Sunday due to an increasing number of imported coronavirus cases. 

The China Railway Harbin Group said it will rearrange train schedules from Sunday. 

Some of the suspended trains links Suifenhe with Harbin, the capital city of Heilongjiang, or Suifenhe to Dalian, a coastal city in Northeast China's Liaoning Province. 

The border city government said it will start carrying out patrols along the border 24 hours a day, vowing to strictly guard every inch of it. 

In a bid to support the border city in its fight against imported cases, the National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention, an institute affiliated with China Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, Sunday dispatched another 15 experts from its labs to the city, bringing the total number of medical experts the institute sent there to 22. 

While most regions in China have seen a drop in the number of confirmed patients, the border city recently returned to a status of tension, imposing lockdowns on all communities from April 8, and allowing only one resident to purchase groceries every three days. 

The Chinese Consulate General in Vladivostok on Saturday issued an alert to Chinese nationals, asking them not to hastily return to China through Suifenhe land port. 

As of Saturday, a total of 173 Chinese nationals who returned to China through the Moscow-Vladivostok-Suifenhe route have been confirmed to have contracted the coronavirus, said the Chinese Consulate General in Vladivostok. "The route has huge infection risks," the consulate said. 

Heilongjiang, the province that administers Suifenhe, reported 21 new imported COVID-19 cases on Saturday, all from Russia, bringing the total confirmed patients to 194,the local health authority said Sunday. 

Construction of a makeshift hospital in Suifenhe has been basically completed and is now procuring medical equipment, the head of the hospital told media on Saturday. 

Global Times