BEIJING – Authorities in Wuhan today said they will test the central Chinese city’s entire population for Covid-19 after the locality, where the coronavirus first emerged, reported its first local infections in more than a year.
The city of 11 million is “swiftly launching comprehensive nucleic acid testing of all residents”, senior official Li Tao told a press conference.
Wuhan authorities yesterday announced that seven locally transmitted cases have been found among migrant workers in the city, breaking a year-long streak without domestic infections after it quashed an initial outbreak with an unprecedented lockdown early last year.
China has confined residents of entire cities to their homes, cut domestic transport links, and rolled out mass testing in recent days as it battles its largest Covid-19 outbreak in months.
The country reported 61 domestic cases today as an outbreak of the fast-spreading Delta variant reached dozens of cities after infections among airport cleaners in Nanjing sparked a chain of cases that have been reported nationwide.
Major cities including the capital here have tested millions of residents while cordoning off residential compounds and placing close contacts under quarantine. – AFP, August 3, 2021
