China to test millions of people in five days after 6 new COVID-19 cases in Qingdao

Amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, China has reported a minor virus outbreak in the port city of Qingdao. In response to the new virus outbreak, authorities in China plan to test more than nine million residents of Qingdao, a city in the northeastern part of China. Six new coronavirus cases were confirmed in China on October 11. The new cases originated at a hospital in Qingdao.

Extensive and rapid COVID tests to be conducted

The deadly COVID-19 pandemic first originated in Wuhan, China and since then has spread to the rest of the world. Through the use of strict restrictions and other measures, China was partially able to beat back the virus and even has been able to revive its economy after months of lockdown had negatively the world's second-largest economy.

Qingdao's municipal health commission on Monday, October 12 announced that they had already conducted tests on more than 100,000 people since discovering the minor outbreak and that they planned to test at least five city districts in the next three days and eventually test more than nine million people in the city in only 5 days.

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Seeing as China was one of the first countries to start re-opening their economy, it has managed to develop ways to conduct virus tests on a large scale and do it swiftly. Last week China also celebrated ‘Golden Week’ wherein some roughly 637 million Chinese tourists took domestic trips. The holiday week that lasted for eight days saw Chines tourists spend tens of billions of dollars, giving the Chines economy a much-needed boost.

The COVID-19 pandemic which saw its first outbreak in a wet market in Wuhan, China last year has now spread all across the world. The virus, named COVID-19 by the World Health Organisation, has infected over 37 million people worldwide with the global death toll crossing 1,000,000. The US has reported more than 7.7 million positive COVID-19 cases and a death toll of over 210,000.

 Image: AP

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