68 new coronavirus cases found on Monday

A new coronavirus cluster in a port city in northeast China has spread to other provinces and prompted fresh restrictions.

China reported 68 new coronavirus cases on Monday, up for the fourth consecutive day, including two in Beijing, the country’s health authority said on Tuesday.

Of the new local infections, 57 were in the northwest Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, according to a statement by the National Health Commission. That takes the number of cases in the region’s current outbreak to 235 since the first infection was reported on July 16.

Six more cases were also reported in the industrial port city of Dalian, Liaoning Province, where a new outbreak first emerged at a seafood processing plant last week, taking the number of new infections in Dalian to 44.

A fresh Beijing case was linked to an asymptomatic patient who had traveled from Dalian — the first new local case since a cluster in the capital was brought under control in early July.

Beijing began testing residents in a suburban housing estate where the patient lives.

Health authorities said the Dalian cluster had now spread to nine cities in five regions, including as far away as the southwest Fujian Province.