China Facing Another Coronavirus Outbreak? After Wuhan, Second City Orders Mass COVID-19 Testing

A city in China's Heilongjiang province orders mass Coronavirus testing, even as 1 imported case was reported in Guangdong Province.

A city in China's Heilongjiang province, close to the Russian border, has ordered Coronavirus tests for all 2.8 Million residents. It should be noted that it became the second city in China after Wuhan, which was the initial COVID-19 epicenter, to conduct mass testing of the entire population.

As per China's National Health Commission (NHC), one imported case was reported in Guangdong Province on Wednesday, June 3. It also said that there are four new asymptomatic cases in the country which has taken the total number of such cases to 326, including 245 in Wuhan city. All of these asymptomatic people have been quarantined, NHC said.

China Coronavirus Testing

Coronavirus test kit
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Even though the novel Coronavirus outbreak started in China in December 2019, which is still a debatable fact, as of the Friday morning the overall confirmed cases in the country reached 84,171. The maximum number of infections have happened in the U.S., followed by Brazil, Russia and other European countries.

Chinese media reported that 69 patients were still being treated, 78,319 had been discharged after recovery and 4,634 people died of the SARS-CoV-2 infection. Meanwhile, a city in China's Heilongjiang province, Mudanjiang, which is close to the Russian border, has ordered tests for its 2.8 million people.

However, it is not clear exactly how many cases have been found in Mudanjiang as of now. But the state media reported that some of the cities in the province registered clusters of COVID-19 infections in April and May.

After new cases started to appear in Wuhan city, where the controversial the bat Coronavirus research lab is located, the authorities immediately started testing the entire population. The health authorities successfully tested almost 10 million people in an unprecedented 19-day campaign.

Later, mass testing revealed asymptomatic Coronavirus cases in the city of Wuhan. The health authorities of the city also found no infections among 1,174 close contacts of the people who tested positive, suggesting they were not spreading the virus easily to others. This is considered as an encouraging development given the widespread concern that infected people without symptoms could be silent spreaders.

Feng Zijian, the vice-director of China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told state broadcaster CCTV that "It not only makes the people of Wuhan feel at ease, it also increases people's confidence in all of China."

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