THE northeastern Chinese cities of Changchun and Jilin, hardest hit by the fresh outbreak of COVID-19, have distributed millions of COVID-19 self-test antigen kits to citizens, including students, to accelerate massive epidemiological screening.

Starting from 4 a.m. Wednesday, Changchun, the capital of Jilin Province, has given out more than 3.34 million self-test kits to part of its urban districts and Yushu City under its administration.

As of Wednesday, Jilin City had sent part of its test kits to key groups, including students in local primary schools, middle and high schools, colleges, and employees at major enterprises.

More than 270,000 doses usable for three days in the test kits have been handed out to the city’s higher learning institutions to meet the daily testing need of their teaching staff and students.

The provincial health authorities also reminded its residents that anyone who tested positive using the self-test kits should report to one’s community, village, or the local disease prevention and control center at once.

Positive test results presented by the kits cannot be the single diagnostic basis for confirmed COVID-19 infection. Further nucleic acid testing will be done before a final diagnosis. Citizens who tested positive using the self-test kits should stay put and isolate themselves from their families. They should wait for medical professionals to collect their samples, said local authorities.

Close to 95 percent of COVID-19 cases in the recent resurgence of infections in Northeast China’s Jilin Province are either asymptomatic or have mild symptoms, local authorities said Thursday.

Conditions of the vast majority of patients with mild or moderate symptoms have improved after treatment, Yang Junling, a specialist on respiratory and critical care medicine, told a press conference Thursday, adding that very few of these patients have so far progressed to severe or critically ill cases.

Jilin province reported 742 confirmed locally transmitted COVID-19 cases and 415 local asymptomatic carriers Wednesday.

As of Wednesday, the construction of eight makeshift hospitals, with 11,488 beds, had been completed, and two temporary quarantine facilities, which boast 662 isolation rooms, had been established in the northeastern province

So far, four medical teams from the Heilongjiang, Jiangxi and Henan provinces, as well as the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, have arrived in Jilin, said a press conference on Jilin’s epidemic prevention and control.

China has dispatched 30 negative pressure ambulances from Jilin’s neighboring Liaoning Province and five nucleic acid testing teams nationwide to the province, said Zhang Li, deputy director of the Health Commission of Jilin Province.

Asymptomatic, mild cases represent majority of Jilin’s cases

The province reported 742 confirmed locally transmitted COVID-19 cases and 415 local asymptomatic carriers Wednesday.

As of Wednesday, the construction of eight makeshift hospitals, with 11,488 beds, had been completed, and two temporary quarantine facilities that boast 662 isolation rooms had been established in the province.

(Xinhua)