It needs just 39 new cases of coronavirus for health authorities in China to put nearly 11 million people in the city of Shijiazhuang, NBC News reports.
Health officials took no chances on Wednesday, shutting down the capital of industrial Hebei province and ordering a mass test drive.
Travel restrictions have been imposed in the rest of the region, which surrounds the capital of China and houses about 76 million people.
By Saturday, Mayor Ma Yujun told a news conference that it had only taken three days to complete the first round of mass tests in Shijiazhuang, with 354 people found positive for the virus. A second test round should start soon, he added.
Yan Xixin, a director of critical care at Hebei Medical University Second Hospital, said at the same news conference: “the risk of getting more infections is still there.”
This hard-and-fast approach is being reflected elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region to ward off the flare-up of the coronavirus – including in Japan, Thailand and Australia – to prevent measures to spread the virus in Europe and the United States. States almost slow to prevent.
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