ANKARA

China on Monday started mobilizing health workers as it scrambles to contain a growing new COVID-19 outbreak driven by the infectious Delta variant.

A total of 94 more cases of local transmission were recorded over the past day, the highest daily figure since January, the National Health Commission (NHC) said in a daily update.

The central Henan province accounted for 41 of the cases, while 38 were confirmed in the eastern Jiangsu province, the epicenter of China’s latest virus outbreak.

Health authorities in Jiangsu have dispatched 4,050 personnel to bolster the fight against COVID-19 in the hard-hit city of Yangzhou, where the “number of confirmed local cases reached 346 as of Monday, including 6 critical cases and 23 severe cases,” Chinese daily Global Times reported.

In Wuhan – ground zero for the global COVID-19 outbreak in late 2019 – authorities conducted nucleic tests for over 11 million residents last week, after fresh cases were detected in the city.

China’s overall virus caseload now stands at 93,826, including 4,636 deaths.

Gao Qiang, the country’s former health minister, said Beijing’s anti-virus measures are “a double insurance strategy that combines precise epidemic control with widespread vaccination, rather than simply trying to achieve herd immunity, let alone living with the virus.”

“Living with the virus was to shirk responsibility as it will only result in epidemic resurgence amid virus mutation,” Global Times quoted him as saying.