Dalian Photo:VCG

The city of Dalian in Northeast China's Liaoning Province, which was recently hit by a new COVID-19 outbreak, reported zero new confirmed cases for the first time in the past 14 days, local health officials announced on Wednesday. 

At a routine press conference which has been held since the first case was discovered on July 22, official said that as of August 4, the city had reported 89 confirmed cases in total.

Among the patients, 39 came from the local Kaiyang Seafood Company, which has been closed since July 22, when the first case was reported. The first patient worked in the processing and cold storage of imported and domestic aquatic products at the company.

Wang Wentao, a deputy director of the city's Market Supervision Administration, said that after the outbreak on July 22, the administration has ordered operators to stop selling, empty the shelves and seal up products from the seafood company. It has also reported the company's sales information to other provinces and regions. 

Local authorities announced on Wednesday that they have taken down and sealed all products from Dalian Kaiyang Seafood Company.

The administration also halted sales and sealed white shrimps from three companies imported from Ecuador and manufactured after March 12. Nucleic acid tests on the environment, packages and shrimp all came back negative.

Due to the impact of rains and other factors over the past few days, some nucleic acid tests in northern China have yet to be completed. The city is to conduct as many tests as possible in urban areas and townships in the northern region. On Tuesday, the city tested more than 80,000 people.

Zhao Zuowei, director of the Dalian Health Commission, said at Monday's press conference that gene sequencing results showed that the virus which caused the infections is different from the one circulating domestically. 

The outbreak has proven to be unrelated to those in Urumqi, Beijing, Harbin or Suifenhe in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, and it is possible that the outbreak was caused by imported cases, Zhao said, noting that experts are working on tracing the source of this particular strain. 

Global Times