Residents in a community in the Liwan district in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province, take nucleic acid testing on November 9, 2022. Photo: VCG

The city of Guangzhou in South China's Guangdong Province plans to add more than 240,000 beds in makeshift hospitals and centralized quarantine zones to prepare for COVID-19 patients' accommodation as it has reported more than 46,000 cases since November.

Guangzhou is making all-out efforts to speed up the construction of makeshift hospitals and centralized quarantine zones with a plan to build a total of 246,407 beds, said Wang Bosen, spokesperson for the Guangzhou Municipal government, on Thursday. According to Wang, Guangzhou has finished 67,399 beds so far.

According to the local health commission, Guangzhou reported 8,761 COVID-19 cases on Wednesday and 16 of them were detected at community level, taking the total number of infections since November to more than 46,000.

Guangzhou officials said the city's Haizhu district has become the epicenter of the outbreak with 8,582 cases found in the district on Wednesday. Some 95,300 residents in Haizhu have been transferred to centralized quarantine zones.

The community transmission chains have not been completely blocked, Haizhu officials said, adding that the district is speeding up COVID testing and construction of makeshift hospitals and quarantine facilities to for rapid transfer of patients and close contacts.

According to the local health commission, there are 6,006 cases in hospitals as of Wednesday and two ordinary cases have turned into severe and critical cases, who are elderly people with several severe underlying diseases. The conditions of the two cases are stable at present.

Global Times