The northeastern Chinese city of Mudanjiang has announced plans to expand the scale of its COVID-19 testing to assess some 2.8 million people, domestic media reported Tuesday. After Wuhan, the city in central China where the novel coronavirus was first detected, Mudanjiang will become the second city in the country to test virtually all of its residents.

The announcement came after Mudanjiang reported 15 positive COVID-19 test results in people without symptoms last week.

In April, the nearby city of Suifenhe — about two hours’ drive east of Mudanjiang — saw a spike in imported COVID-19 cases among residents returning from Russia. Because of the relative shortage of medical supplies in the city, all of its confirmed, symptomatic patients were transferred to hospitals in Mudanjiang for treatment.

In the past few months, several cities in the northeastern Chinese provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang, where Mudanjiang is located, have taken more stringent measures, including full and partial lockdowns, to stop the coronavirus from spreading. In May, the central city of Wuhan tested 9.9 million of its 11 million residents, reporting some 300 asymptomatic cases.

Editor: David Paulk.

(Header image: Medical workers collect a man’s throat sample for a COVID-19 nucleic acid test at a school in Mudanjiang, Heilongjiang province, June 1, 2020. People Visual)