Employees at Shanghai's largest international airport were subjected to massive screening on Monday, November 23 after a few cases of Covid-19 in the metropolis, linked to air cargo employees.
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The Asian country has largely contained the epidemic since the spring, thanks to tests, confinements, quarantines and tracking of movements.
Life has resumed an almost normal course, with the exception of localized outbreaks.
The metropolis of Shanghai - which has 24 million inhabitants - reported in November six local patients with Covid-19 linked to Pudong international airport.
Most of the cases have been detected in recent days.
On the night of Sunday to Monday, medical staff in full protective suits drove a crowd of employees to a parking lot to screen for the coronavirus.
As of Monday morning, samples had already been taken from more than 17,700 people, said the official China New news agency, which said that of the 11,500 results obtained so far, all are negative.
Employees working in the air cargo sector will now undergo regular screening, according to the same source, citing Zhou Junlong, vice president of the Shanghai airport authority.
Airport workers with particularly exposed jobs will also be able to get vaccinated on a voluntary basis, he said.
Since this summer, China has authorized inoculation of experimental anti-Covid-19 vaccines for urgent cases, in particular caregivers, or employees and students going abroad.
Authorities said Monday that two air cargo workers at Shanghai Pudong Airport, who tested positive in November, entered a container from North America in late October without wearing a mask.
China is organizing massive screenings during the emergence of local sources of contamination.
Current suspicions are mainly focused on frozen food imported from abroad, after the detection of traces of coronavirus on several of these products.
The metropolis of Tianjin, 100 km southeast of Beijing, has also reported a few cases in recent days.
The city is currently testing around 2.6 million people.
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