Hebei Province reported a total of 326 locally transmitted confirmed COVID-19 cases and 234 asymptomatic cases from Jan. 2 to 10 a.m. yesterday, Vice Governor Xu Jianpei said yesterday.

Of the confirmed cases, 304 were reported in the provincial capital Shijiazhuang, 21 in the city of Xingtai, and one in the city of Langfang, Xu said at a press briefing.

The province reported 21 locally transmitted confirmed COVID-19 cases from midnight Monday to 10 a.m. yesterday. Five were reported in Xingtai and 16 in Shijiazhuang.

The National Health Commission has urgently allocated convalescent plasma from recovered COVID-19 cases in Wuhan for the treatment of severe patients in Hebei, said Liang Zhankai, director of Hebei provincial health commission, adding that hospitalized patients are generally in stable condition.

A total of 252 testers from other provincial-level regions have been sent to Shijiazhuang, Xingtai and Langfang to assist in nucleic acid testing and help Hebei increase its daily testing capacity to 1.1 million tubes, said Liang.

Lack of vigilance against the novel coronavirus and weak health-care awareness are among the factors contributing to the recent COVID outbreak in Hebei, of which a majority of the cases are from rural areas, health experts said.

More than 85 percent of confirmed cases reported in Hebei are from rural areas, according to the provincial health commission.

Rural residents, especially senior citizens, are particularly vulnerable to infections due to a lack of proper anti-virus awareness and knowledge, said Wu Hao, an advisor to the National Health Commission.

Many of the confirmed cases had attended gatherings, such as weddings, banquets, and funerals, according to the provincial health commission.

For example, the first detected case, a 61-year-old woman from Shijiazhuang, the provincial capital, visited family members and attended religious gatherings - in which few people wore a mask - after she contracted the virus.

Many patients took medicine themselves or went to small clinics after symptoms like fever and cough appeared, and grassroots-level healthcare facilities failed to offer proper guidance and set off early warnings, according to the provincial health commission.