BEIJING – Wuhan authorities said they have completed a citywide Covid-19 testing of more than 11 million people after a resurgence of cases, more than a year after the coronavirus first emerged there.
The tests – which began on Tuesday – provide “basically full coverage” of all residents in the city, except for children under the age of 6 and students on summer break, said senior official Li Tao, according to state-run Xinhua.
By Saturday, Xinhua reported that the central Chinese city had recorded 37 locally transmitted Covid-19 cases and 41 local asymptomatic carriers, in the latest round of mass testing.
City officials had last week announced that seven locally transmitted infections have been found among migrant workers in Wuhan, breaking a year-long streak without domestic cases after it squashed an initial outbreak with an unprecedented lockdown early last year.
Authorities said they quickly mobilised more than 28,000 health workers at around 2,800 sites for the testing campaign.
China brought domestic cases down to virtually zero after the coronavirus first emerged in the city in late 2019, allowing the economy to rebound and life to return largely to normal.
But the fresh outbreak has thrown that record into jeopardy, as the fast-spreading Delta variant reaches dozens of cities after infections among airport cleaners in Nanjing sparked a chain of cases that have been reported across the country.
China has since confined the residents of entire cities to their homes, cut domestic transport links and rolled out mass testing, as it battles the outbreak – its largest in months.
Beijing has also tightened overseas travel restrictions for citizens as part of efforts to contain the rising cases.
On Wednesday, China’s immigration authority had announced that it will stop issuing ordinary passports and other documents needed for exiting the country in “non-essential and non-emergency” cases.
However, that does not yet mean a blanket overseas travel ban for the Chinese public. – AFP, August 9, 2021
