China to conduct COVID tests on entire city of Qingdao after new cases emerge

Officials in China’s Qingdao announced on Monday they would test the city’s whole population of more than nine million people for COVID-19 throughout the next five days after new cases emerged linked to a hospital healing people who had been confirmed with the infection after returning from abroad.

The coastal city, nearly 700km (435 miles) southeast of Beijing, announced six new COVID-19 cases and six asymptomatic cases as of late October 11 with most of the cases linked to the Qingdao Chest Hospital.

China has comprehensive, fast test capacities and the health commission stated more than 140,000 employees of “medical organisations, recently confirmed patients and employees” had been examined in Qingdao since the cases were affirmed.

After the news, the National Health Commission (NHC) stated mainland China had 21 confirmed COVID-19 cases on October 11. The report did not, but not involve any confirmed contaminations in Qingdao, and it was not instantly clear why.

The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not count as confirmed cases, increased to 32 from 23 a day earlier, the NHC announced. It arranged not to offer an analysis on where the new asymptomatic cases were reported, although it said 29 of these cases involved people returning from overseas.

The coronavirus first emerged in the central city of Wuhan late last year, and the city and its encompassing province of Hubei were sealed off after cases mounted towards the end of January.

China has bounced back since then, and daily COVID-19 cases have fallen drastically from those peaks, but the nation continues on high alert.

In June, extensive regions of Beijing were subject to mass tests after the centre, which is house to more than 20 million people, discovered virus cases associated with a food market.

Qingdao has already bolted down Qingdao Chest Hospital as well as the accident department of its central hospital. The buildings where those diagnosed with the disease activity have also been sealed off as part of the authorities’ containment dimensions.

China is also excited to be first to roll out a coronavirus vaccine, with several organisations in final-stage experiments. Although unproven, vaccines have now been administered to numbers of thousands of key operators and soldiers.