120 Hours: Qingdao Combating COVID-19

(Xinhua News' report on Oct,18th) 

-Time set back to Oct.12th, many Qingdao residents could not sleep because three asymptomatic COVID-19 patients suddenly appeared in Qingdao the day before and the source of the infection was unknown.

- Until midnight of October 17, Qingdao city announced that all nucleic acid tests had been basically completed, with the results of 1,0899,145 nucleic acid samples. No new positive samples except the confirmed diagnosis announced at the begin.

120 HOURS! Under the guidance and support of the government of Shandong Province, Qingdao has seized the "golden window period" in dealing with the epidemic, decisively launched nucleic acid testing for residents, and spared no effort to treat and cure the confirmed patients. At the same time, the expert panel for tracing the source fought continuously for 72 hours, the quickly crack the case, and reached the authoritative conclusion that "no community communication had taken place".

With the investigation, the real situation of this is more and more clear. Two COVID-19 virus infected patients left the closed ward for CT examination during quarantine period in Qingdao Chest Hospital. The CT room was contaminated by virus due to non-standard protection and disinfection, and then infected the hospitalized patients and the medical staff who went to the same CT room for examination the next day, which cause these cases in the hospital.

On th 16th, after the nucleic acid test was basically completed, part of the collection sites will be kept for another 2 days to ensure that citizens who failed to participate in the test. A total of 10920,411 nucleic acid test samples have been collected in Qingdao as of 14:00 on the 17th, and 10920,294 samples have obtained results. In addition to the confirmed diagnosis, no new positive samples have been found. The patients' overall condition gradually have been turning better.