China races to squash new Covid-19 cluster among schoolchildren
Gulf Times
A child undergoes a nucleic acid test for the Covid-19 coronavirus in Xiamen, in China's eastern Fujian province on September 14, 2021.
Southern Chinese cities closed schools and ordered testing for millions on Tuesday in a race to curb a new Covid-19 outbreak which has sparked concerns over infections among unvaccinated schoolchildren.
Putian, a city of 3.2 million in coastal Fujian province, ordered testing of all residents on Tuesday after Delta variant cases linked to a returnee from Singapore ballooned into a province-wide outbreak of more than 100 people.
China has now been hit by multiple outbreaks of the highly contagious Delta variant after initially vanquishing the first wave of the coronavirus last year.
The Fujian cluster is the biggest rebound in weeks and comes after the country declared the Covid outbreak spurred by the Delta under control, in a test of China's "zero case" approach to the pandemic.
