Locals: Northern Harbin, China, Suffering Rise in Coronavirus Cases Again

HONG KONG, CHINA - JANUARY 31: Residents wear surgical mask as they cross a street in a sh
Anthony Kwan/Getty Images

Chinese authorities are concealing information surrounding yet another outbreak of the Chinese coronavirus in northeastern Harbin, according to local residents who spoke with the Epoch Times.

Residents told the Times that they knew of at least five people who have died of the coronavirus whose cases authorities have not disclosed publicly. One interviewee under treatment added that, at one hospital, there are around 30 patients who are yet to make a full recovery and remain in isolation.

The statements contradict Chinese officials, who claim that the last coronavirus patient was discharged on May 16 from the hospital where he was being treated.

“We are very anxious, but the doctors said they have no solutions,” patient Zhang Lng was quoted as saying. “They didn’t give us any medicine, and are hoping our bodies recover by ourselves.”

The virus began spreading in the central Chinese city of Wuhan last year and spread across the country before infecting people around the world. Having been the first country to face the pandemic, Chinese health officials declared in April that they had largely defeated the virus and could begin returning to life as normal. However, there have been multiple reports of allegedly minor outbreaks spreading across several Chinese provinces, including Heilongjiang, of which Harbin is the capital. Communist officials appear eager to cover these up, presumably to strengthen the narrative that China was one of just a handful of countries to successfully manage and eradicate the virus.

Last month, the Chinese Communist Party’s senior medical advisor warned that the country could face a second wave outbreak of infections due to a lack of immunity among the broader population.

“The majority of … Chinese at the moment are still susceptible to the Covid-19 infection, because of a lack of immunity,” Zhong Nanshan, the Communist Party’s most prominent medical mouthpiece during the outbreak, told CNN. “We are facing a big challenge. It’s not better than the foreign countries I think at the moment.”

China is widely understood to have covered up key information about the virus before it threatened the world, a decision that likely cost thousands of lives and enormous damage to the global economy. A recently leaked report compiled by the Five Eyes intelligence alliance determined that the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) turned a blind eye as Chinese authorities went about “disappearing” whistle-blowing doctors, censored information about the outbreak, destroyed samples of the virus in laboratories, and refused to hand over samples to international experts, thus delaying ongoing efforts to develop a cure or a vaccine for the virus.

Follow Ben Kew on Facebook, Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart.com.

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