Nucleic testing The city of Qingdao in Shandong Province has activated a plan to conduct city-wide nucleic acid testing for COVID-19 after new cases were reported. Qingdao has reported six new confirmed cases and the same number of new asymptomatic cases of COVID-19 since fresh infections emerged in the city over the weekend, the municipal health commission said on Monday. Epidemiological investigations found that the cases were linked with the Qingdao Chest Hospital, which had been used to treat imported COVID-19 patients. The city will complete nucleic acid testing in five districts within the next three days, while the testing will cover the whole city in five days, according to a notice issued by the municipal health commission, adding that the results will be released in a timely manner. Virus control China has managed to wrest control of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been attributed to speedy response and its culture among others, medical journal The Lancet has reported. Comparing the pandemic developments in China and some Western countries, an article published in the journal on Thursday said that “a centralized epidemic response system” has placed China in a prime position to tackle the disease. “The speed of China’s response was the crucial factor,” said Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group in Rochester, the U.S. state of Minnesota. Civil aviation sector The country’s civil aviation sector continued to recover in September, with airports seeing flights return to more than 90 percent of the volume registered in the same period last year, an industry report shows. Chinese airports handled a total of 375,300 outbound flights last month, down 6.86 percent compared to the previous year, but up 1.6 percent month on month, according to a report released by VariFlight, a China-based civil aviation data service provider. Holiday trips A total of 637 million trips were made across China during the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, 79 percent of last year’s number, according to data released by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism on Thursday. The tourism turnover was 466.56 billion yuan (US$68.71 billion), which is 69.9 percent of the same period last year. China’s daily train trips had exceeded 10 million for eight consecutive days by October 7, the railway operator said.(SD-Agencies) | 