Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan Province, has entered "wartime mode" after seven domestic COVID-19 cases were found in two days, with authorities racing against time to track the patients' close contacts scattered across the city. Experts say there is a high possibility that the Chengdu outbreak can be traced back to imported cases or goods.
Chengdu has entered "wartime mode," said Secretary of Communist Party of China Sichuan Committee Peng Qinghua on Tuesday. The city is expanding nucleic acid testing and carrying out virus gene sequencing to curb the spread of COVID-19 and identify the source of the outbreak.
Some reports say Chengdu is locking down the city, but the claims were dismissed by authorities as a rumor.
Four new COVID-19 patients and a silent carrier were discovered on Tuesday, after two were reported the previous day, local health authorities announced. The silent carrier works at a school canteen.
Chengdu is far from a situation in which it needs to lock down, and the key task for the city is to find the sources of the infection quickly, Wang Guangfa, a respiratory expert at Peking University First Hospital, said on Tuesday.
"It is highly probable that the Chengdu outbreak can be traced to imported sources, whether it is 'people' or 'goods'," Wang noted, explaining that China's domestic infections have already died out and given the rampant overseas epidemic and increasing cases in relation to imported cases and cold-chain foods.
Zhu Xiaoping, the chief expert of Sichuan's anti-epidemic group, revealed that the houses of the first two patients, a couple, was severely contaminated by the virus, as environmental samples collected from a doorknob, switch, food stored in the fridge and a chopping board all tested positive.
The couple, a 69-year-old woman surnamed Lu and her husband living in Pidu district, were diagnosed as having COVID-19 on Monday, and the status of the community where they live have been lifted to medium risk.
Their granddaughter is among the three new confirmed patients on Tuesday morning. An epidemiological investigation showed that the woman had been to various parts of the city, including a nail salon, park, restaurants and clubs. The other two were a couple who live in Taiping village.
