Passengers inbound from overseas rerouted

Tianjin reported four new confirmed COVID-19 cases on Monday morning after it received a rerouted Air China flight from Paris, France, on Sunday.

The four cases, one French and three Chinese, brought the city's total imported novel coronavirus cases to five.

Five government departments, including the Civil Aviation Administration of China and the General Administration of Customs, announced on Thursday that Tianjin was one of the first three airports to receive people from flights that had been scheduled to land in Beijing from March 20 to 22. The others were Hohhot and Taiyuan.

Ten people who had fevers on the flight were sent to Tianjin Haihe Hospital for examination, and 171 passengers and 10 crew members were sent to quarantine hotels. There were 229 people on the flight, CA934.

Beginning Monday morning, 12 airports, including Tianjin, Shijiazhuang, Taiyuan, Hohhot, Shangahi Pudong, Qingdao, Nanjing, Shenyang, Dalian, Zhengzhou and Xi'an were designated by the government to accommodate rerouted inbound flights from Beijing. It is the latest upgraded effort to ease the growing pressure in the capital from imported infections of the coronavirus.