COVID control teams dispatched as holidays approach

The State Council's Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism has dispatched 15 teams to bolster COVID-19 control work oversight as the New Year and Spring Festival holidays approach, authorities said on Wednesday.

Mi Feng, spokesman of the National Health Commission, said during a news briefing that the groups are tasked with supervising disease-control measures at ports, the management of centralized isolation facilities, and overseeing local capabilities for delivering treatment and preventing hospital-acquired infections, as well as regular containment measures in key venues.

Mi said the risk of the virus's spread exists as the two major holidays are drawing near.

He Qinghua, an official with the commission's Disease Prevention and Control Bureau, said that the overall epidemic situation is stable, but that the outbreak in Northwest China's Shaanxi province is developing quickly.

China had fully vaccinated 1.207 billion people as of Tuesday, according to the commission.