BEIJING – More than three million swabs have been taken in a matter of days in Qingdao, the Chinese port city where a minor coronavirus outbreak elicited a sweeping health response.
Queues for testing stretched deep into last night across the eastern city, which detected six Covid-19 cases the day before and swiftly swung into action to head off a wider outbreak.
In scenes that contrast with the fumbled efforts of other nations to establish effective testing regimes, Qingdao health workers in protective gear set up tents to take samples across neighbourhoods, where parents brought toddlers for testing.
Social media users said community representatives informed them of the nearest testing stations, with local districts helping to organise sample collection for mass testing.
“As of 8am... our city has taken 3.08 million samples for nucleic testing, with 1.11 million results received,” said the city’s health commission in a statement today.
In addition to six people with symptoms, six asymptomatic cases have been detected so far.
The city declared that it aims to test its entire population – around 9.4 million people – within five days of the detection of the first cases at a hospital on Sunday.
It is not immediately clear how fast the results can be processed, although China has paraded its rapid testing capacities during previous minor outbreaks.
The ruling Communist Party is desperate to show its ability to manage the pandemic to citizens – as well as foreign audiences – after the virus emerged in the central city of Wuhan late last year.
The country has bounced back since, and forced widespread lockdowns that hammered the world’s second-largest economy.
China is also desperate to be the first nation to produce a Covid-19 vaccine, with several companies in final-stage trials. – AFP, October 13, 2020
