Medical workers conduct the third round of full-scale nucleic acid testing on November 14, 2021 in a university in Dalian, Northeast China's Liaoning Province. Photo: CFP

 Dalian, the port city in Northeast China's Liaoning Province, is seeing a decelerating upward trend in the current COVID-19 resurgence, and is expected to contain the wave in two weeks, according to the city's officials. 

"The third round of citywide nucleic acid testing in Dalian has seen all negative results so far," said government official Yi Qingtao at a news conference on Monday, "which means the epidemic prevention and control has achieved an important turnaround."

This round of the outbreak is entering a stable and controllable period, while there may still be a small number of sporadic cases found in centralized isolation hotels or in the community, according to Zhao Zuowei, director of the Dalian Health Commission. 

"If the results of the third round of citywide nucleic acid tests come out as expected, Dalian is expected to control the outbreak within the first incubation period of 14 days," Zhao said. 

The city reported its first COVID-19 case in the latest wave on November 4. 

All strains in Dalian sequenced so far are in the same transmission chain and are judged to be a local outbreak caused by the same strain of Delta variant, with low homology to both the recent local and imported outbreaks in China, said Ma Xinguang of Dalian CDC. 

Although the source of this outbreak in Dalian is yet to be confirmed, current information shows the transmission is highly related to the cold chain industry. The first case of the fresh outbreak was identified as an employee working at a local cold-chain storage warehouse, and many of the patients work at a local food company. 

The port city reported a total of three confirmed COVID-19 cases from Sunday midnight to 4 pm Monday, all of whom were found in centralized isolation hotels and who were close contacts of previously reported cases.

Currently, there are 198 centralized isolation spots and 22,195 people under isolation. 

Dalian has reported a total of 307 infections in 12 days in this round of COVID-19 resurgence as of 4 pm Monday, characterized by clusters of companies, families and schools.

https://china.huanqiu.com/article/45b7Utpe549 

Global Times