BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s capital of Beijing has detected some positive COVID-19 cases in the first round of mass testing conducted in a dozen districts this week, a municipal official said on Wednesday.
Based on the results from 19.80 million out of the 19.81 million samples taken, 12 tubes of mixed samples tested positive, a Beijing health official said.
Under mass testing campaigns in China, multiple samples are tested together in a single tube.
In Chaoyang district, three tubes, each holding five samples acquired in locked down areas, were found positive, while in Tongzhou district, one tube containing three samples tested positive and two tubes holding 10 samples were also positive, the official told a news conference.
A few other districts also reported positive cases.
As of 3 p.m. (0700 GMT) on Wednesday, 46 new locally transmitted cases had been found since 4 p.m. the previous day, a second Beijing official said.
(Reporting by Ryan Woo, Albee Zhang and Judy Hua; Editing by Robert Birsel)