Beijing, Oct 15 (IANS): China's coastal city of Qingdao in Shandong province on Thursday said it would conduct the nucleic acid testing campaign of all its 11 million residents within five days starting from October 19, after a new cluster of local Covid-19 infections emerged.

As of Thursday morning , more than 9.94 million people had been sampled, while over 7.64 million of the collected samples had been tested, reports Xinhua news agency.

Except for the cases already reported, no new positive samples have been detected.

By Wednesday, there were 13 confirmed cases in the cluster, most of which were linked to the Qingdao Chest Hospital, which had been used to treat imported Covid-19 cases.

Sui Zhenhua, director of the Qingdao municipal health commission, was suspended following the resurgence of the virus, according to a decision made by the Qingdao municipal committee of the Communist Party of China on Wednesday.

Although the Covid-19 originated last December in China's Wuhan city, the capital of Hubei province, China now accounts for only 90,869 cases, while the US (7,916,533) and India (7,307,097) are currently the two worst-affected countries in the world.

China's death toll stands at 4,739.