Hebei's capital city to test for coronavirus

Starting on Wednesday, Shijiazhuang in Hebei province will start its citywide nucleic acid testing to cover its more than 10 million residents.

The announcement was made by Wang Jianfeng, spokesman for Shijiazhuang city's government, on Tuesday night during the city's first press conference since the outbreak.

Nucleic acid tests use respiratory samples of a patient to detect if a virus may be present.

Gaocheng district in the city, where all the confirmed coronavirus cases in Shijiazhuang are, has collected more than 40,000 samples for nucleic acid tests, he said. The mass test in the district will finish on Wednesday.

The infection in Shijiazhuang has the feature of a family cluster, and many cases emerged suddenly in a short time, said Lu Fei, head of Shijiazhuang city's center for disease control and prevention.

Lu said the throat swap sample of the first confirmed case in Shijiazhuang has been sent to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention for a complete genome sequencing to find out the infection source.

Hebei province reported 14 new confirmed cases and 30 new asymptomatic carriers on Tuesday, all locally transmitted, bringing the total of recently confirmed cases in the province to 19, according the provincial health commission.

Among the confirmed cases, 14 are from Gaocheng district, Shijiazhuang. The new 30 new asymptomatic carriers are all in the city.