The China port city of Qingdao in eastern Shandong province is the site of a resurgence of COVID-19. It is too early to say if this might mean the start of a second wave of infections, however, experts say.
The Qingdao Municipal Health Commission late Sunday reported 12 patients in a local transmission cluster - with six being asymptomatic. It said it found three asymptomatic cases linked to the hospital treating COVID-19 patients from abroad. Testing of patients and staff later uncovered another nine infections.
The commission has begun testing the city's entire population of 9.5 million. It plans to complete testing within five days.
The Qingdao cluster is China's first local transmission in two months and ends a streak that saw China without a single case of community spread. It is China's biggest since the country declared COVID-19 under control in early May.
Western public health experts said the disease's resurgence in China mirrored the experience in Europe which is experiencing the highest new daily infections since spring. Talk of a second wave is gaining currency among the Europe medical community.
COVID-19's comeback in China reflects the difficulty of controlling the disease in any one country when outbreaks are still spreading rapidly in other countries, the experts say. They can't say for sure if the cluster is linked to last week's eight-day long Golden Week celebration that saw some 637 million domestic trips throughout China. Golden Week started on National Day, Oct. 1 and lasted until Oct. 8.
Two national holidays converged in the same week this year: National Day - celebrating the founding of the People's Republic of China - and the mid-Autumn Festival. The result of this was to extend to eight days the usual weeklong holiday - making Golden Week the longest holiday of the year.
Some China health experts warned about a resurgence linked to Golden Week. Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, said Golden Week might become a big test for China's health care system.
"I have been paying attention to the coronavirus case reports every day and I can make a rudimentary judgment that we have passed this test," Wu said on CCTV on Saturday. "But since the virus has a (long) incubation period we need to observe for around 10 days before we reach a final conclusion."
The National Health Commission claimed no locally transmitted COVID-19 cases were reported during Golden Week. It said 122 new cases were attributed to visitors from overseas.
