Tianjin combs department store salespeople, customers and close contacts

Baodi district of north China's Tianjin Municipality plans to finish one-on-one health checks of more than 20,000 salespeople, customers of a local department store and their close contacts by Wednesday.

Nearly 3,000 staff in the district were dispatched on the large-scale mission starting from Tuesday afternoon, while screening work actually started as early as the first individual, a sales clerk at the store, was diagnosed with novel coronavirus (COVID-19) infection on January 31.

All those connected to the store and their close contacts have been told to remain in quarantine at home.

As of 3pm on Wednesday, Baodi had reported 41 confirmed cases of COVID-19 infection.