On the afternoon of January 6, the Jinhua Municipal Government Information Office held its 13th press conference on the control and prevention of COVID-19.

Zhou Qiqiang, deputy director of the Jinhua Municipal Health Commission, gave a brief overview of the pandemic in Jinhua. From midnight on January 5 to 3 p.m. on January 6, a new case of confirmed infection in Yongkang was quarantined and treated in a designated medical institution, and those who had had close contact with the infected patient were under medical observation.

According to the relevant provision from the State Council and comprehensive assessment from experts, Xiachen Village and Hengjie Weighing Apparatus Factory, near where the confirmed patient lives, were zoned as medium-risk regions. The closing off of the areas was to control and prevent the spread of the pandemic by limiting people-to-people contact.

The result of gene sequencing reported by Zhejiang Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention showed that the virogene of the confirmed case was VOC/Delta (B.1.617.2). The sequence was highly homologous to those of confirmed cases in other provinces. The patient with the confirmed case hadn’t left Jinhua in 14 days and he had come across two confirmed cases from another province at a petrol station in Jinyi.

In response to the requirements of government and relevant departments in Zhejiang, the Jinhua Municipal Health Commission assigned more than 200 experts to work on analyzing data of contact crowds and more than 500 people to do nucleic acid testing. The governments of Jinhua and many districts there all took actions and cooperated in tracing back people’s routes, doing nucleic acid testing, and disinfecting the at-risk regions. Their efforts improved management and control of the masses in at-risk regions in accordance with their degree of contact as well as implemented disinfection procedures for the places involving infection.

As of 7 p.m. on January 5, a large-scale nucleic acid testing operation was undertaken in Yongkang, and as of 3 p.m. January 6, 43,559 people had been tested and their results were all negative. Meanwhile, the second round of testing has begun. (By Du Xiaoping, translated by Wang Junwen, edited by Mariam Ayad)