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Barcraft Media
Very few cases were confirmed on Sunday in the coastal city of Qingdao
The Chinese city of Qingdao is testing its entire population of nine million people for the five-day Covid-19.
The mass testing comes after a dozen cases were found linked back to a hospital treating coronavirus patients from abroad.
In May, China tested the entire city of Wuhan – home to 11 million people and a global epidemic.
The virus is largely under control in the country.
This is in stark contrast to other parts of the world where there are still high number of cases and lockdown restrictions of varying intensity.
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In a statement to Chinese social media site Weibo, the Qingdao Municipal Health Commission said six new cases and six asymptomatic cases had been found.
All the cases were linked to the same hospital, the Global Times reported.
Correspondents said that even when the new coronavirus cluster seems relatively insignificant, the Chinese authorities now have a strategy of mass testing.
City-wide testing
The commission added that a city-wide testing program has been launched, in which five districts will be tested in three days – and the entire city in five days.
About 114,862 people, including medical staff and patients admitted to new hospitals in city hospitals, have already tested negative for coronavirus.
Some of these test points were open from 07:00 to 23:00, according to the Global Times, in a video circulating online showing local residents inning late Sunday night.
The new cases come a week after China’s Golden Week holiday – which saw millions travel across the country.
The city received 47.4747 million passenger trips during the period, according to a report quoting the Global Times’ Qingdao Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism.
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The nearby city of Jinan, also in the same province as Qingdao, has been urging anyone who has visited the city since September 23 to get tested for the virus, The Paper reported.
Earlier last month, Qingdao announced that two port workers in the city handling imported seafood had tested positive for the virus. However, they did not infect anyone else.
Daily coronavirus infections have declined sharply in China, and for the most part appear to have improved from the worst state of the virus in the country.
In China, there are currently 85,578 cases of the virus and 4,6344 deaths.
Earlier this year, China completed a mass testing program in Wuhan, saying 11 million people had been tested in 10 days.
However, later BBC reality investigations estimated that the figure was close to 9 million in 10 days – still a significant number of people.
Hundreds of testing centers were opened, including thousands of testing personnel.
