Medical workers collect a throat swab from a citizen at a nucleic acid testing site in Haidian District of Beijing, capital of China, June 18, 2020. (Photo: Xinhua/Ren Chao)

Beijing tested over 2.3 million people for COVID-19 between June 12 and June 22, its health authority said at a daily briefing Tuesday on the capital city’s latest coronavirus outbreak. 

As of Monday, Beijing had confirmed 249 COVID-19 cases in the wake of clustered infections from a produce wholesale market on June 11.

Over 2,400 testing sites were set up across Beijing, and nearly three million people were rounded up for swab tests in mid-June. Beijing’s testing capacity is on a “fast track” as its daily maximum has been boosted to 300,000 samples, said an official at the briefing. 

The Beijing health commission said the city will be able to test a million people a day if it uses batch testing, a method adopted in Wuhan’s mass testing, in which samples from five people are mixed together. 

The city asked people who approached infected cases or areas, medical workers, deliverymen and restaurant workers to undergo mandatory testing.

(Compiled by Chen Lidan)