China's Xiamen clears COVID-19 medium, high risk areas

XIAMEN -- The city of Xiamen in East China's Fujian province, which witnessed the country's latest resurgence of COVID-19 cluster infections, cleared all medium- and high-risk areas for COVID-19 on Thursday night.

The city downgraded three medium-risk areas and one high-risk area for COVID-19 to low-risk areas starting 9 pm Thursday, according to the municipal epidemic prevention and control headquarters.

People leaving Xiamen also no longer need to show negative results of nucleic acid tests taken within 48 hours of their departure, the headquarters said.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak in Fujian on Sept 10, the four cities of Putian, Quanzhou, Xiamen and Zhangzhou had reported a total of 468 locally transmitted COVID-19 confirmed cases by Wednesday, with 195 cases still being treated at hospitals, the provincial health commission said Thursday.

The other three cities have earlier all cleared medium- and high-risk areas for COVID-19.