Get tested and stay home: Guangzhou tries to stem Covid-19 outbreak

Name: China’s southern Guangdong province in high gear to quash Covid-19 outbreak
Uploaded: 2021-06-03T23:30:17.000Z
Duration: 2 min 2 s
Description: China’s southern Guangdong province in high gear to quash Covid-19 outbreak

Authorities have vastly expanded screening capacity and public health expert says situation ‘would have been more alarming’ without it

Some 70 locally transmitted cases have been found, some of them the highly infectious Delta variant, but it is unclear how it entered the community

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Volunteers in protective gear make their way to a locked down community in Guangzhou’s Liwan district on Thursday to distribute food and supplies. Photo: VCG

Guo Rui

Published: 7:30am, 4 Jun 2021Updated: 7:52am, 4 Jun 2021

Health authorities in the southern Chinese megacity of Guangzhou are hoping to stem a new outbreak of Covid-19 infections through vastly expanded testing capacity and strict quarantine measures in affected areas.

The industrial hub – home to almost 19 million people – has been grappling with a growing number of cases since May 21, from a cluster that has been traced to a 75-year-old woman from Liwan district. The woman was found to have been infected with the highly transmissible strain first detected in India, a variant now named Delta by the World Health Organization.

Mass testing has been a key strategy in trying to contain the spread of the virus, especially in the hotspot districts of Liwan, Haizhu, Yuexiu and Tianhe, where getting tested is mandatory. More than 7.81 million of the city’s residents had been tested as of Wednesday, according to Chen Bin, deputy director of Guangzhou’s Health Commission.

So far, 70 locally transmitted cases have been found across Guangdong province, 14 of them asymptomatic infections. That includes 16 new cases confirmed on Wednesday, five asymptomatic.

02:02

China’s southern Guangdong province in high gear to quash Covid-19 outbreak

China has largely brought the pandemic under control, though it has seen sporadic outbreaks. While the numbers in the latest wave have been relatively low so far, it has spread elsewhere in Guangdong – to the neighbouring cities of Foshan and Maoming, as well as Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong.

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