Authorities in the Chinese city of Wuhan plan to test all 11 million residents for covid-19 by the end of next week, in a massive push to extinguish any remnants of the coronavirus from the original epicenter of the global pandemic.
The all-encompassing mission — announced Monday and paid for by district governments — contrasts with shortages of testing kits in some other countries, including the United States, where people have complained about not being able to get a test despite having coronavirus symptoms.
But the scope of the endeavor underscores official sensitivities about any new flare-up in Wuhan, where the virus emerged in a market late last year. It comes after officials reported six new coronavirus cases in two days, confounding health experts after a 35-day streak without infections.
“It is important to realize that a decisive result does not equal a decisive victory, lowering the emergency response level does not equal lowering defenses,” said Wang Zhonglin, a top official in the Communist Party in Wuhan, according to the state-run Changjiang Daily. “We must not be careless or lax,” he told a video conference of officials called to respond to a sudden spate of cases in the city.
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Local health authorities reported that five people in one residential compound in Wuhan had been diagnosed with coronavirus Sunday, all of them linked to an elderly man who had been confirmed as infected the previous day.
They all lived in the Sanmin compound in the East West Lake district of Wuhan, which Chinese leader Xi Jinping visited in March during his first trip to the city since the outbreak began.
The infections were the first found in Wuhan since the city emerged from its stringent 11-week lockdown on April 8.
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After the cluster was discovered, all 5,000 residents of the Sanmin compound — where 20 people had tested positive for coronavirus during the lockdown — were ordered to undergo nucleic acid tests to screen for coronavirus.
But Wuhan authorities decided to go further. The city’s epidemic prevention and control headquarters issued an emergency notice Monday ordering all district management units to submit plans by Tuesday for completing nucleic acid testing of all residents in their jurisdiction within 10 days.
This “10-day battle” would focus first of all on vulnerable groups like the elderly and infirm, and on densely populated communities, including those with a concentrated migrant population, the notice said.
More than one million residents had been tested so far, the Yicai financial news site reported, quoting an unnamed Wuhan epidemic response command center official as saying that the local government realized it had to further expand the scope of testing to prevent a new wave of outbreaks.
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The Wuhan cluster has been traced to an 89-year-old man who developed a fever on March 17 but recovered at home within 10 days without seeing a doctor.
But he started to have health issues again last month, and was last week confirmed as having coronavirus. His wife and then two other elderly couples in the compound also tested positive for the virus.