Just two months after China declared its country free from the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, today 12 new cases emerged, all of which stemmed from a hospital.
Following that, Chinese health authorities announced that they would conduct screening tests on 9 million Qingdao residents for 5 consecutive days.
On Sunday, Shandong district reported three cases of asymptomatic infection starting from a hospital receiving COVID-19 patients from abroad.
Screening tests conducted on Qingdao's 277,000 people today led to another 9 new infections.
This means that the total number of infections is 12 cases with 6 of them being asymptomatic infections.
The case record so far is the highest rate in the past two months, with the last positive case in August recording four patients from Urumqi Xinjiang province.
To prevent the spread of the epidemic on a larger scale, the Communist Party has stopped any activities including travel and business throughout the district while monitoring the movement of tourists and visitors to public buildings to track the signs of infection.
To date, the government has not provided any further explanation on the epidemic infection either through travel or trade.
